wallow
/ˈwɒləʊ
/verb [no object]
1(Chiefly of large mammals) roll about or lie in mud or water, especially to keep cool or avoid biting insects: there were watering places where buffalo liked to wallow...
- There was the engine, sparkling clean and just waiting to purr like a kitten, but the rest of the boat looked like a greased pig had wallowed up and down the route to the engine compartment many times.
- When the giant waves struck the coast of Kenya, Owen was wallowing with his herd in the ocean near the mouth of the Sabaki River.
- Cape buffalo prefer areas of open pasture, close to jungle and swampy ground where they can wallow.
Synonyms
loll about/around, lie about/around, tumble about/around, splash about/around;
slosh, wade, paddle, slop, squelch, welter
informal splosh
1.1(Of a boat or aircraft) roll from side to side: a ship wallowing in stormy seas...
- However, don't think Queen Mary 2 is another clone for the lumbering, simpering, overblown jolly boats wallowing and waddling around the world's sunshine destinations.
- Video showed the aircraft wallowing through the air at a very low speed - it must be remembered that the landing gear was down.
- The ship wallowed through waves up to 30 feet high in the treacherous Drake's Passage.
Synonyms
roll, lurch, toss (about), plunge, reel, sway, rock, flounder, keel, list;
labour, make heavy weather
2 (wallow in) (Of a person) indulge in an unrestrained way in (something that one finds pleasurable): I was wallowing in the luxury of the hotel he had been wallowing in self-pity...
- If he'd indulged and relished them and wallowed in them and had wilful malice in what he did… but he was always trying not to be as nasty as he could be.
- I know he wallows in indulgent individualistic angst.
- This, he reckons, is a bitter pill for Scots who quite enjoy wallowing in a perceived anti-Scottish backlash.
Synonyms
luxuriate, bask, take pleasure, take satisfaction, indulge (oneself), delight, revel, glory;
give oneself up to, take to;
enjoy, like, love, relish, savour, rejoice in, exult in
informal get a kick/buzz out of, get a kick/buzz from
North American informal get a bang from, get a charge out of
noun
1An act of wallowing: a wallow in nostalgia...
- But the music is often painfully beautiful, especially the love song Marie and the emotional wallow of Guilty, and Newman's craftsmanship is consistently staggering.
- The animal-impulse of Miniature Golf rivalry can end in the victorious wallow of gratification or the blaze-of-glory, club-throwing tanty.
- My nightly wallow has become such a ritual that I rarely miss it, regardless of where I am or at what time I get in - and if the water is anything less than piping hot, I'd rather go without.
2A depression containing mud or shallow water, formed by the wallowing of large mammals: a buffalo wallow...
- They are great diggers of wallows and water-holes and they help other animals to access water.
- We often observed confused babirusas searching for lost wallows and pangi trees, and each day saw babirusa skulls lying in the clear streams - remains of the logging team's meal the previous evening.
- Subdominant males form separate bachelor groups often in isolated ponds or wallows.
Derivatives
wallower
- Liverpudlians are wallowers in self pity and they love nothing more than to hold a grudge.
- As a confirmed wallower in that scandal, I've always believed that Nixon either ordered the break-in or gave a non-specific order that that kind of thing be done.
- Egon looks and sounds like the classic blond beast, but is in fact a decent fellow, born long after the war, who is neither a Holocaust denier nor a wallower in guilt.
Origin
Old English walwian 'to roll about', of Germanic origin, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin volvere 'to roll'.