SWARM • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Swarm

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/swɔrm/ Listen

noun

Swarm n.

1.

A large number or mass of small animals or insects, especially when in motion. "A deadly swarm of hornets."

2.

Especially, a great number of honeybees which emigrate from a hive at once, and seek new lodgings under the direction of a queen; a like body of bees settled permanently in a hive. "A swarm of bees."

3.

Hence, any great number or multitude, as of people in motion, or sometimes of inanimate objects; as, a swarm of meteorites. "Those prodigious swarms that had settled themselves in every part of it (Italy)."

Synonyms: Multitude; crowd; throng.

verb

Swarm v. t. To crowd or throng.

Swarm v. i. To climb a tree, pole, or the like, by embracing it with the arms and legs alternately. See Shin. (Colloq.) "At the top was placed a piece of money, as a prize for those who could swarm up and seize it."

Swarm v. i. (past & past part. swarmed; pres. part. swarming)

1.

To collect, and depart from a hive by flight in a body; said of bees; as, bees swarm in warm, clear days in summer.

2.

To appear or collect in a crowd; to throng together; to congregate in a multitude.

3.

To be crowded; to be thronged with a multitude of beings in motion. "Every place swarms with soldiers."

4.

To abound; to be filled (with).

5.

To breed multitudes. "Not so thick swarmed once the soil Bedropped with blood of Gorgon."

See images of 'Swarm'

Etymology of 'Swarm'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Swarm" Quotes from Famous Books

... and blotting out the sweetness with angry buzzing, furry bodies, armed with sharp stings for punishment or revenge. She had seen a little peach-tree weighed down and bowed to the red earth at its roots with the weight of such a swarm. She felt at this juncture very like the tree. A little more, only a slight increase of the burden, and the slender trunk would have snapped. When the native bee-master came and shook the double swarm into a couple of hives, the little ...

— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... cavalry, excellent for skirmishing, harassing, terrifying, by their extraordinary shouts and their unbridled gallop. They were not able to hold out against a regular disciplined cavalry provided with bits and substantial arms. They were but a swarm of flies that always harasses and kills at the least mistake; elusive and perfect for a long pursuit and the massacre of the vanquished to whom the Numidians gave neither rest nor truce. They were like Arab cavalry, badly armed for the combat, but sufficiently ...

— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... Every look of them is a sigh—'Would I were something other! I am sick and tired of what I am.' In this swamp-soil of self-contempt, every poisonous weed flourishes, and all so small, so secret, so dishonest, and so sweetly rotten. Here swarm the worms of sensitiveness and resentment, here the air smells odious with secrecy, with what is not to be acknowledged; here is woven endlessly the net of the meanest of conspiracies, the conspiracy ...

— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... must not travel as a courier of the Czar usually would. No one must even suspect what he really was. Spies swarm in a rebellious country; let him be recognized, and his mission would be in danger. Also, while supplying him with a large sum of money, which was sufficient for his journey, and would facilitate it in some measure, General Kissoff had not given ...

— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... the face with his polite struggles when he broke from them at last. "How they do hang on to a man, over here!" the Iowa man continued. "And the Americans are as bad as any. Why, there's one ratty little Englishman up at our place, and our girls just swarm after him; their mothers are worse. Well, it's so, Jenny," he said to the lady who had joined them and whom March turned round to see when he spoke to her. "If I wanted a foreigner I should go in for a man. And these officers! Put their mustaches up at ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

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