wallow
Americanverb (used without object)
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to roll about or lie in water, snow, mud, dust, or the like, as for refreshment.
Goats wallowed in the dust.
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to live self-indulgently; luxuriate; revel.
to wallow in luxury; to wallow in sentimentality.
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to flounder about; move along or proceed clumsily or with difficulty.
A gunboat wallowed toward port.
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to surge up or billow forth, as smoke or heat.
Waves of black smoke wallowed into the room.
noun
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an act or instance of wallowing.
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a place in which animals wallow.
hog wallow; an elephant wallow.
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the indentation produced by animals wallowing.
a series of wallows across the farmyard.
verb
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(esp of certain animals) to roll about in mud, water, etc, for pleasure
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to move about with difficulty
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to indulge oneself in possessions, emotion, etc
to wallow in self-pity
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(of smoke, waves, etc) to billow
noun
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the act or an instance of wallowing
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a muddy place or depression where animals wallow
Other Word Forms
- wallower noun
Etymology
Origin of wallow
before 900; Middle English walwe, Old English wealwian to roll; cognate with Gothic walwjan; akin to Latin volvere
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Dane said he spent most of his life “wallowing and worrying in self-pity, shame and doubt.”
From Los Angeles Times
Star, heaving and panting in a wallow of mud that was sucking her down, down.
From Literature
She ponders whether its home on Disney+ will mean it gets a big audience, adding: "But let's just wallow in nostalgia."
From BBC
We see how Paul decides he’d rather, as he puts it, “suck the marrow of what’s left of this amazing life” than wallow.
From Los Angeles Times
But the ILO warned that efforts to improve global job quality had stagnated, leaving hundreds of millions of workers wallowing in poverty, even as trade uncertainty risked cutting into workers wages.
From Barron's
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
