swale

• IPA^(key): /sweɪl/
• Rhymes: -eɪl

• Audio (Southern England)

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Possibly from Middle English swale (“a shady place, a shadow”), perhaps of North Germanic origin; akin to Old Norse svalr (“cool, fresh”), Icelandic svalir (“a balcony running along a wall”).

swale (plural swales)

1. A low tract of moist or marshy land.
2. A long narrow and shallow trough between ridges on a beach, running parallel to the coastline.
3. A shallow troughlike depression created to carry water during rainstorms or snow melts; a drainage ditch.
4. Bioswale, a shallow trough dug into the land on contour (horizontally with no slope), whose purpose is to allow water time to percolate into the soil.
   • 2009, Toby Hemenway, Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition, Chelsea Green Publishing, →ISBN, page 101:

     The stored water creates an underground reservoir that aids plant growth for tens of feet below the swale. Swales also prevent gullies from forming by intercepting rainwater, slowing it, spreading it, and storing it in the soil.

5. A shallow, usually grassy depression sloping downward from a plains upland meadow or level vegetated ridgetop.
   • 1912 January, Zane Grey, chapter 6, in Riders of the Purple Sage […], New York, N.Y., London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC:

     Jane climbed a few more paces behind him and then peeped over the ridge. Just beyond began a shallow swale that deepened and widened into a valley, and then swung to the left.

See sweal.

swale (plural swales)

1. (UK, dialectal) A gutter in a candle.

swale (third-person singular simple present swales, present participle swaling, simple past and past participle swaled)

1. Alternative form of sweal (melt and waste away, or singe)

• Slewa, Wales, alews, lawes, sweal, wales, weals

swale

1. Alternative form of whale