swoon
/swuːn
/verb [no object]
1 literary Faint, especially from extreme emotion: Frankie’s mother swooned and had to be helped to the headmaster’s office...
- For a moment, I grew a bit faint at the sight and swooned, but I quickly gathered up my strength.
- People swoon and faint when I casually mention that I don't have a mobile phone.
- He had never met a woman who wouldn't swoon at the sight or mention of death.
2Be overcome with admiration, adoration, or other strong emotion: women swoon over his manly, unaffected ways...
- The wheel of fashion turned full circle during London Fashion Week, with the best designers convincing audiences to swoon over collections they would have balked at this time last year.
- All of us have watched her swoon over many different male characters in movies, and then we have watched the male characters swoon over her at least a dozen times.
- It's great that we swoon over the relationships we see in romantic comedies and cheesy sitcoms, but real life isn't like that.
noun literary
An occurrence of fainting: he found his wife in a swoon...
- Hero is publicly denounced by Claudio on her wedding day, falls into a swoon, and apparently dies.
- This would further be followed by epileptic fits, swoons, faints, wails and finally a happy reunion.
- With great difficulty I refrained from falling to the ground in a heart-stopping swoon and gave a little wave.
Origin
Middle English: the verb from obsolete swown 'fainting', the noun from aswoon 'in a faint', both from Old English geswōgen 'overcome'.
Rhymes
- proletarize
- proletary
- proletcult
- proletculte
- proletkult
- proletkul't
- proletkultist
- prolet-ˈcultist
- prolicidal
- prolicide
- microcrystallinity
- microculture
- microcyclic
- microcyst
- Microcystis
- microcyte
- microcythaemia
- microcythemia
- microcytic
- microcytosis
- microdata
- microdegree
- microdensitometer
- microdermabrasion
- microdetector