swallow up something/someone
swallow
noun[ C ]
us/ˈswɑl·oʊ/

swallownoun[C] (BIRD)

any of various types of small bird with pointed wings and a tail shaped like a fork, which flies quickly, catching insects

swallownoun[C] (MOVING FOOD)

the act of forcing food or liquid in your mouth to move into your stomach, or an amount taken into your stomach at one time :
He said he only wanted one swallow of milk – but it was a big one!

swallow | Business English

swallow
verb[ T ]
uk /ˈswɒləʊ/us
(alsoswallow up)
if an activity or process swallows or swallows up a lot of resources, it uses a lot of time, money, or people:
The luxury brand swallowed over $3 billion in its first ten years of being taken over.
High house prices mean that a much larger percentage of a family's income is now being swallowed up by the mortgage.
FINANCE
if a company swallows or swallows up a smaller one, it buys it and makes it part of its own business:
The small family firm was at risk of getting swallowed up by foreign competitors.
informal
to accept something without doubting or questioning it:
The MP expenses scandal revealed abuses that the taxpayer could not swallow.

Examples of swallow

swallow
We found i that spider monkeys swallowed seeds from almost all of the species from which they ate ripe fruits.
No trematodes were observed in the lung or air sac, heart, liver, spleen and kidney of all bats and swallows.
Genetic and environmental effects on morphology and fluctuating asymmetry in nesting barn swallows.
Magnetic field changes in the human brain due to swallowing or speaking.
The habit of flies of swallowing the " vomits " and regurgitating them again after a short interval gives some support to this suggestion.
Effects of verbal cue on bolus flow during swallowing.
The combination of bedside swallowing assessment and oxygen saturation monitoring of swallowing in acute stroke: a safe and humane screening tool.
Wood swallows too much seventeenth-century counsel's purple prose about these people.
The factory she starts work in on leaving school is eventually bought by a larger company, which is swallowed up by a multi-national.
The health domains described included mobility, stage of disease, pain, hoarseness, tiredness, pneumonia, swallowing and meals, psychological problems, and social support.
Care was taken that the chicken swallowed the entire inoculum.
Dif®culty swallowing liquor as a result of the facial cleft or associated anomaly may lead to polyhydramnios.
Monitoring in an awake patient also may induce some degree of discomfort and sometimes deep breathing, swallowing and neck movements interfere with measurements.
Polyhydramnios may be secondary to oesophageal obstruction/compression thus reducing the volume of liquor swallowed.
Animals were released from the neck yoke and observed closely for 2-3 min to confirm that the boli had been swallowed.
See all examples of swallow
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.