ground-swell
A deep swell or heavy rolling of the sea, the result of a distant storm or seismic disturbance.
| 1818 Scott Hrt. Midl. iii, The agitation of the waters, called by sailors the ground-swell. 1840 R. H. Dana Bef. Mast i. 2 The vessel..rolled with the heavy ground swell. 1877 Black Green Past. xxviii. (1878) 221 Crashing its way through the rolling waves of a heavy ground-swell. |
b. fig. Usually with reference to mental or political agitation.
| 1817 Coleridge Zapolya i. Wks. IV. 219 It is the ground⁓swell of a teeming instinct. 1856 R. A. Vaughan Mystics (1860) I. 91 The religious world was rocking still with the groundswell that followed those stormy synods. 1870 Lowell Among my Bks. Ser. i. (1873) 219 The deep-raking, ground⁓swell of passion, as we see it in the sarcasm of Lear. |