SWF

S1W4F4
/ˈswɪf/

noun

A file encoded in the defunct Adobe Flash file format SWF.

Less commonScrabble 9

Meanings

nounSWF (plural SWFs)

plural SWFs

  1. abbreviationinitialismInitialism of single white female.

    SWF seeks same / Asian or Hispanic or African American

    2007, Buddy Whittington, “Romance Classified”
  2. abbreviationinitialismbusinessInitialism of sovereign wealth fund.

    Norway's SWF sells Jardine stake over ‘severe environmental damage’ risks [title]

    2024 March 2, A. Anatha Lakshmi, William Langley, Mercedes Ruehl, “Norway’s SWF sells Jardine stake over ‘severe environmental damage’ risks”, in FT Weekend (Companies & Markets section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 13
  3. computingA file encoded in the defunct Adobe Flash file format SWF.
    3 more examples

    On the Web, linking to a SWF directly is not a very attractive option. You can’t control the content around the SWF or the title of the page in the browser title area. It’s also difficult to add content that’s friendly to search engines, and it’s impossible to detect a Flash version or provide alternate content for people with special needs. For these reasons, most developers choose to embed their SWFs in an HTML page for their end users.

    2008, Chris Allen, Wade Arnold, Aral Balkan, Nicolas Cannasse, John Grden, Moses Gunesch, Marc Hughes, R. Jon MacDonald, Andy Zupko, The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development, Berkeley, Calif.: Friends of Ed, Apress, →ISBN, page 131

    A SWF file, or simply “a SWF,” is an efficient, compressed binary file that can contain graphics, animation, text, bitmaps, sounds, video, and even arbitrary data. […] When compiling AIR apps, an .air file is generated, but even this is a package that contains SWFs for its executable ActionScript code.

    2010, Roger Braunstein, ActionScript® 3.0 Bible, 2nd edition, Indianapolis, Ind.: Wiley Publishing, Inc., →ISBN, page 8

    When you run a SWF using Flash Player on your desktop, it loads and runs the SWF. Well, of course, why wouldn't it? When you run a SWF in a browser, this isn't always the case, though. Sometimes, browsers cache SWFs, meaning that they save a copy locally and then load that copy—rather than the online version—the next time you request it.

    2010 December, Michael James Williams, “Introduction”, in Facebook Graph API Development with Flash, Birmingham: Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN
proper noun
  1. abbreviationinitialismcomputingInitialism of Spring Web Flow.
  2. abbreviationhistoricalinitialismcomputingInitialism of Shockwave Flash.
  3. abbreviationinitialismInitialism of Standard Written Form (of the Cornish language)

Synonyms & antonyms

Origin

(file format): SWF originated as an abbreviation for Shockwave Flash. This usage was changed to the backronym Small Web Format to eliminate confusion with a different technology, Shockwave, from which SWF derived. There is no official resolution to the initialism SWF by Adobe.

Full word history & related roots →

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

SWF. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/SWF

MLA

“SWF.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/SWF. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “SWF,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/SWF.

Source: SWF on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.