- a small bird, with long pointed wings and a tail with two points, that migrates (= moves from one part of the world to another according to the season)Topics Birdsc2
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- an act of swallowing; an amount of food or drink that is swallowed at one time
- She took a swallow of coffee.
bird
of food/drink
Word Originnoun sense 1 Old English swealwe, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch zwaluw and German Schwalbe. noun sense 2 Old English swelgan, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch zwelgen and German schwelgen.
Idioms
See swallow in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionaryone swallow doesn’t make a summer
- (saying) you must not take too seriously a small sign that something is happening or will happen in the future, because the situation could change
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swallow