Tumefy
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To cause to swell. transitive
"to swell, tumefy, stiffen, not the diction only, but the tenor of the thought"
- 2 expand abnormally wordnet
- 3 To swell; to rise into a tumour. intransitive
"[…] Lanfrank takes Notice of Tract. 3. Doct. 3. cap. 18. ſaying, "I have ſeen many who being full of Humours, have made an Iſſue under the Knee, before due Purgation had been premis'd; whence, by reaſon of the too great Defluxion of Humours, the Legs tumified, ſo that the cauterized Place corrupted, and a Cancer (or rather cacoethic Ulcer) was thereby made, with which great Difficulty was cur'd.""
- 4 cause to become very swollen wordnet
Example
More examples"to swell, tumefy, stiffen, not the diction only, but the tenor of the thought"
Etymology
From French tuméfier, from Latin tumefaciō, ultimately from tumeō, from Proto-Indo-European *tum-éh₁- (“to be swelling”), stative stem of *tum- (“to swell”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.