swarth, a track, pathway; ‘There is a hardway, and at Binsey the said way is called in one or two places the king’s swarth . . . the king’s way’, Hearne, Reliquiae, Feb. 10 and 11, 1728; ‘The king’s swarth (formerly called also Port street), beyond New Parks by Oxford, went over by a bridge the river Charwell’, id., April 23, 1720. OE. swaðu, a track. See [swath].
swarth, in Twelfth Nt. ii. 3. 162, ‘By great swarths’, apparently ‘in great quantities’. In Cheshire they speak of a heavy hay-crop being ‘a good swarth’, see EDD. (s.v. Swarth, sb.1). Probably the same word as [swath], q.v.
swarth, black, dark, swarthy. Titus And. ii. 3. 72; Two Noble Kinsmen, iv. 2. 27; Chapman, tr. Odyssey, xix. 343. A Kentish form (EDD.).
swarty, dark, ‘swarthy’. Fletcher, Bonduca, iii. 1 (Caratach); Titus And. ii. 3. 72 (in the quarto editions). See Dict. (s.v. Swart).
swash, to strike violently. Stanyhurst, tr. of Aeneid, i. 53, 125. In prov. use (EDD.).
swash, a swaggering bully. Three Ladies of London (Fraud), in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, vi. 254; Britannia Triumphans, 1637 (Nares). Also swasher, Hen. V, iii. 2. 30; swashing, blustering, As You Like It, i. 3. 122; tremendous, crushing, Romeo, i. 1. 70. In prov. use ‘to swash’ means to swagger, to walk with a boastful air; ‘a swasher’ is a swaggerer, see EDD. (s.v. Swash, 5).
swash-buckler, one who ‘swashes’ or beats his buckler, Beaumont and Fl., Bloody Brother, v. 2 (Latorch); Faithful Friends, i. 2. 7; ‘Mangia-ferro, Mangia-cadenacci, a devourer of iron-bolts, a swash-buckler, a bragging toss-blade, a swaggerer’, Florio; ‘Bravache, swaggerer, swash-buckler’, Cotgrave. See Halliwell.
swash-ruter, a swaggaring soldier, a swaggerer. Stanyhurst, tr. of Aeneid, i. 544. See [rutter].
swath, a row of grass mown; ‘The Greeks fall down before him like the mower’s swath’, Tr. and Cr. v. 5. 25; ‘Grass lately in swaths is meat for an ox’, Tusser, Husbandry. In prov. use in various parts of England (EDD.). ME. swath of mowing, ‘falcidium’ (Prompt. EETS. 445); swathe, ‘orbita falcatoris’ (Cath. Angl.). OE. swæð, a track, the track of a plough, ‘somita’ (B. T.). See [swarth] (a track).
swathling-clothes, swaddling-clothes. 1 Hen. IV, iii. 2. 112 (Q. edd.). ME. swathlen, to swaddle; swaþeling-bonde, a swaddling-band (Cursor Mundi, 1343). See Dict. (s.v. Swaddle).