Where does swell collide?

In medicine a swelling is a local enlargement of tissue, most often from oedema: excess fluid accumulating in the interstitial spaces when the balance of pressures across the capillary wall tips toward filtration. Starling's 1896 On the absorption of fluids from the connective tissue spaces established the hydrostatic-and-osmotic balance (the 'Starling principle') that governs when fluid leaves the blood and pools in the tissues. The referent is a clinical sign measured by volume or circumference change, unrelated to an ocean wave train or a musical crescendo beyond the shared word.[1]

Unit

The increase in tissue volume or girth from accumulated fluid

Recovery means

Swelling resolves as the pressure balance is restored and fluid is reabsorbed or drained by the lymphatics

Measured by

Assessed by limb circumference or volume, pitting on pressure, and imaging of fluid accumulation

In physical oceanography swell is the set of smooth, long-period waves that travel out of a distant storm, having outrun and separated from the shorter, choppy wind sea where they were generated, so they arrive at a coast as regular, well-ordered crests. Barber and Ursell's 1948 The generation and propagation of ocean waves and swell showed how wave period and speed sort the arriving trains by their source distance. The referent is a class of ocean surface waves measured by period, height, and direction, unrelated to tissue fluid or a music dynamic.[2]

Unit

Long-period surface waves, described by period, height, and direction

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Characterised by dominant wave period, significant wave height, and direction, separable from the local wind sea in the wave spectrum