H. Gurr was one of the best swimmers ever known. J. B. Johnson, in 1871, won the championship for swimming.
Swing (Captain), a name assumed by certain persons, who, between 1830 and 1833, used to send threatening letters to those who used threshing-machines. The letters ran thus:
Sir, if you do not lay by your threshing-machine, you will hear from Swing.
Swiss Family Robinson. This tale is an abridgment of a German tale, by Joachim Heinrich Kampe.
Switzers, guards attendant on a king, irrespective of their nationality. So called because at one time the Swiss were always ready to fight for hire.
The king, in Hamlet, says, “Where are my Switzers?” i.e., my attendants; and in Paris, to the present day, we may see written up, Parlez au Suisse (“speak to the porter”), be he Frenchman, German, or any other nation.
Law, logicke, and the Switzers may be hired to fight for anybody.--Nashe, Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem (1594).
Swiveller (Mr. Dick), a dirty, smart, young man, living in apartments near Drury Lane. His language was extremely flowery, and interlarded with quotations: “What’s the odds,” said Mr. Swiveller, à propos of nothing, “so long as the fire of the soul is kindled at the taper of conwiviality, and the wing of friendship never moults a feather?” His dress was a brown body-coat, with a great many brass buttons up the front, and only one behind, a bright check neckcloth, a plaid waistcoat, soiled white trousers, and a very limp hat, worn the wrong side foremost, to hide a hole in the brim. The breast of his coat was ornamented with the cleanest end of a very large pocket-handkerchief; his dirty wristbands were pulled down and folded over his cuffs; he had no gloves, and carried a yellow cane, having a bone handle, and a little ring. He was forever humming some dismal air. He said min for “man,” forgit, jine; called wine or spirits “the rosy,” sleep “the balmy,” and generally shouted in conversation, as if making a speech from the chair of the “Glorious Apollers” of which he was perpetual “grand.” Mr. Swiveller looked amiably towards Miss Sophy Wackles, of Chelsea. Quilp introduced him as clerk, to Mr. Samson Brass, solicitor, Bevis Marks. By Quilp’s request, he was afterwards turned away, fell sick of a fever, through which he was nursed by “the marchioness” (a poor house-drab), whom he married, and was left by his Aunt Rebecca an annuity of £125.
“Is that a reminder to go and pay?” said Trent, with a sneer. “Not exactly, Fred,” replied Richard. “I enter in this little book the names of the streets that I can’t go down while the shops are open. This dinner to-day closes Long Acre. I bought a pair of boots in Great Queen Street, last week, and made that ‘no thoroughfare’ too. There’s only one avenue to the Strand left open now, and I shall have to stop up that to-night with a pair of gloves. The roads are closing so fast in every direction, that in about a month’s time, unless my aunt sends me a remittance, I shall have to go three or four miles out of town to get over the way.”--C. Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, viii (1840).
Sword. (For the names of the most famous swords in history and fiction, see Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 869.) Add the following:--