The verb 'swallow' originates from the Old English 'swelgan', which meant "to swallow, ingest, devour". This term is rooted in the Proto-Germanic swelganą, carrying the same sense of consuming by taking into the stomach. The Proto-Germanic form can be traced further back to the Proto-Indo-European root swel- meaning "to eat, drink", which is also the ancestor of words like 'swill'. The core semantic logic has remained remarkably consistent from its ancient origins: the physical action of taking something into the body through the throat. Over time, its meaning expanded metaphorically to include the uncritical acceptance of ideas or information and the action of something being engulfed or made to disappear, mirroring the physical process of ingestion.

The word 'swallowed' is the past tense and past participle form of the verb 'swallow'. It is derived from the Old English verb 'swelgan', meaning "to swallow, ingest". The modern form 'swallow' is a simplex word, representing a tight Germanic root where the '-ed' suffix is a regular inflection for tense and not a separate lexical morpheme. Therefore, it is not segmentable into meaningful, independent morphemes based on its current spelling.