What's the difference between spill and swill?

Spill


Definition:

  • (n.) A bit of wood split off; a splinter.
  • (n.) A slender piece of anything.
  • (n.) A peg or pin for plugging a hole, as in a cask; a spile.
  • (n.) A metallic rod or pin.
  • (n.) A small roll of paper, or slip of wood, used as a lamplighter, etc.
  • (n.) One of the thick laths or poles driven horizontally ahead of the main timbering in advancing a level in loose ground.
  • (n.) A little sum of money.
  • (v. t.) To cover or decorate with slender pieces of wood, metal, ivory, etc.; to inlay.
  • (v. t.) To destroy; to kill; to put an end to.
  • (v. t.) To mar; to injure; to deface; hence, to destroy by misuse; to waste.
  • (v. t.) To suffer to fall or run out of a vessel; to lose, or suffer to be scattered; -- applied to fluids and to substances whose particles are small and loose; as, to spill water from a pail; to spill quicksilver from a vessel; to spill powder from a paper; to spill sand or flour.
  • (v. t.) To cause to flow out and be lost or wasted; to shed, or suffer to be shed, as in battle or in manslaughter; as, a man spills another's blood, or his own blood.
  • (v. t.) To relieve a sail from the pressure of the wind, so that it can be more easily reefed or furled, or to lessen the strain.
  • (v. i.) To be destroyed, ruined, or wasted; to come to ruin; to perish; to waste.
  • (v. i.) To be shed; to run over; to fall out, and be lost or wasted.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) When you have champions of financial rectitude such as the International Monetary Fund and OECD warning of the international risk of an "explosion of social unrest" and arguing for a new fiscal stimulus if growth continues to falter, it's hardly surprising that tensions in the cabinet over next month's spending review are spilling over.
  • (2) According to Nigerian government figures, there were more than 7,000 spills between 1970 and 2000, and there are 2,000 official major spillage sites, many going back decades, with thousands of smaller spills still waiting to be cleared up.
  • (3) In another patient, there were symptoms of drug overdose when the contents of the balloon spilled into the intestinal tract.
  • (4) It was, as we say in French, the drop of water that made the glass spill over.
  • (5) I couldn't shake the harsh words from my head and worried about if, or when, they would spill over into real life.
  • (6) My role as deputy is to support the leader, not to change the leader, and I don’t support a spill motion.” “I support the prime minister, I support the leader.
  • (7) And it has left the international community floundering as it tries to respond to conflicts spilling across the globe.
  • (8) And so I would stare at a discarded popcorn box, a spilled drink or simply the darkness that disappeared into the seat ahead of me – listening carefully to quickening breaths – allowing the film’s soundscape to caress me.
  • (9) Tony Abbott has heard the message on the need to change his leadership style, a senior minister has said, warning the prime minister’s detractors against moving an “amateur-hour” spill motion next week.
  • (10) Oil is coating birds and delicate wetlands along the Louisiana coast, and the political fallout from the spill has reached Washington, where the head of the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling resigned today.
  • (11) Droplets of each admixture were placed on stainless steel, laboratory coat cloth, pieces of latex examination glove, bench-top absorbent padding, and other materials on which antineoplastics might spill or leak.
  • (12) Jeremy Hunt has been forced into a partial climbdown in his dispute with NHS junior doctors in an attempt to stop their fury at a threatened punitive new contract spilling over into strike action.
  • (13) Three years of frustration at the torpor he found at the centre of the party spills out.
  • (14) Spills in the US are responded to in minutes; in the Niger delta, which suffers more pollution each year than the Gulf of Mexico, it can take companies weeks or more.
  • (15) Couple this with the revelation that degrees might not even be worth the investment, and the sense of betrayal from those who have already graduated risks spilling over.
  • (16) Tottenham’s Danny Rose apologises for setting bad example in Chelsea draw Read more The ill feeling spilled over into the tunnel at the end as Spurs and Chelsea players got involved in a rolling maul which led to the home manager Guus Hiddink being sent flying and his counterpart Mauricio Pochettino attemping to prise the multiple brawlers apart.
  • (17) The time to hand over the reins came and went, Keating challenged and lost, before heading to the backbench to lick his wounds and shore up the factional numbers needed for a successful spill.
  • (18) The serum triglyceride of the patients in group 4 (highest urinary glucose content and spills) was significantly elevated above three other groups with less glucosuria.
  • (19) For example, one victim of the federal cuts is oil spill response units , which means that drilling and pipeline projects will become even riskier.
  • (20) BP would need to bring equipment from Texas to contain South Australia oil spill Read more BP plans to drill the first of four exploratory wells off the South Australian coast next year and submitted an environmental plan (pdf) for approval to the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority last week.

Swill


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To wash; to drench.
  • (n.) To drink in great draughts; to swallow greedily.
  • (n.) To inebriate; to fill with drink.
  • (v. i.) To drink greedily or swinishly; to drink to excess.
  • (n.) The wash, or mixture of liquid substances, given to swine; hogwash; -- called also swillings.
  • (n.) Large draughts of liquor; drink taken in excessive quantities.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It's a small sample, consisting of the folk on the train to Kings Cross this lunchtime, but your MBM correspondent saw: several gentlemen swilling from cans of San Miguel and talking excitedly about the World Cup; two blonde women in frankly disorienting 1980s style football shorts waving flags; and a bloke sitting on his own necking a tin of pre-mixed gin and tonic.
  • (2) Then go beg the lady with the clipboard, while others swan past to join the cocktail-swilling vacationers swathed in white linen on the porch.
  • (3) Alastair Butler, a free-range pig farmer, said most pig farmers were against the reintroduction of swill feeding because of the "real risk" to their animals and livelihood.
  • (4) The Bank of England, the big energy companies and media groups such as Rupert Murdoch’swill all be watching particularly closely, having heard Corbyn warn he wants either to reduce their independence, bring them under more “social” control or break them up.
  • (5) It described the Pig Idea as a "superficially attractive concept, promoted by well-meaning people, but it is destined to fail because it is fundamentally unsafe, and the European Union will not be persuaded to lift its zero-tolerance ban on feeding swill to pigs."
  • (6) "Transplanting the Pirates Of The Caribbean aesthetic to the Wild Wild West proves disastrous in The Lone Ranger, an indigestible swill of forced humour and oversized, overbearing action sequences," he writes.
  • (7) It's what we expect of the modern detective: a solitary, whisky-swilling wolf, with a chip on the shoulder as big as a .38 and nights spent alone on a sofa that one suspects is covered in stains.
  • (8) Ten months since it finally receded, the foul brown floodwater that swilled knee-deep through Steve and Kay Wilton’s home for much of February has, it seems, left its mark on more than just their once-pristine 19th-century farmhouse.
  • (9) Further down Seoul Street, the huge Grandkhaan Irish Pub has been entertaining beer-swilling ex-pats and travellers since 2005.
  • (10) "There is a lot of [advertising] money swilling about the pot now Lite and the London Paper are going," says a senior Associated source.
  • (11) This neutralises and dilutes the acid that swills around after the breakdown of food by bacteria that normally live around your teeth and gums.
  • (12) "For these reasons, we believe the risk of swill feeding is just too great."
  • (13) The source of zinc was flaking galvanising from the inside of bins used to store swill before processing.
  • (14) Click here to view On his Acid Rap mixtape, which was downloaded 50,000 times the day it was released, Chance reveals himself to be more interested in the mind-expanding qualities of LSD than poppin' molly or swilling Grey Goose.
  • (15) Dr Gillian Lockwood, from the Midland Fertility Centre, suggested recently that as women are having babies later and later, young women should seriously consider freezing their ova in their early 20s for use in their late 30s – after their clichéd life of high-flying career, martini-swilling, cigarette-wafting and spanx-filling.
  • (16) The revelation is an insight into some of the tricks employed by clubs, agents and other middle men when such vast sums of money are swilling around before the transfer deadline.
  • (17) Under its proposals, it could be mandatory for food waste to be treated in centralised processing plants to ensure all swill was safe to be used as feed.
  • (18) The warm bath of mutualised treacle that swilled around Westminster at the beginning of the week has turned toxic.
  • (19) He was the absolute opposite of the chain-smoking, whiskey-swilling, bar-brawling father whom I had loved so dearly as a child and who was the reason that our lives had always been such utter mayhem.
  • (20) Yet, the band called Queen, the lead singer a tights-wearing Mercury, were going down a storm with the beer-swilling rockers who just didn't seem to be consciously aware of what was strutting before their eyes.