swink
see also: Swink
Pronunciation
Swink
Proper noun
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002
see also: Swink
Pronunciation
- IPA: /swɪŋk/
swink (plural swinks)
- (archaic) toil, work, drudgery
- 1963, Anthony Burgess, Inside Mr. Enderby:
- Dead on this homecoming cue Jack came home, his hands sheerfree of salesman’s swink, ready for Enderby.
- 1963, Anthony Burgess, Inside Mr. Enderby:
swink (swinks, present participle swinking; past swank, past participle swunk)
- (archaic, intransitive) to labour, to work hard
- 1370-90, William Langland, Piers Plowman
- Heremites on an heep · with hoked staues,
- Wenten to Walsyngham · and here wenches after;
- Grete lobyes and longe · that loth were to swynke,
- Clotheden hem in copis · to be knowen fram othere;
- And shopen hem heremites · here ese to haue.
- for which men swink and sweat incessantly
- 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses (novel)
- And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white flames that they fix in the horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously.
- 1370-90, William Langland, Piers Plowman
- (archaic, transitive) To cause to toil or drudge; to tire or exhaust with labor.
- 1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], H[enry] Lawes, editor, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: Printed [by Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, OCLC 228715864 ↗; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, OCLC 1113942837 ↗:
- And the swinked hedger at his supper sat.
Swink
Proper noun
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002