swink

plural swinks

1. archaiccountableuncountableToil, work, drudgery.

   Dead on this homecoming cue Jack came home, his hands sheerfree of salesman’s swink, ready for Enderby.

   1963, Anthony Burgess, Inside Mr. Enderby

present singular third person swinks · participle present swinking · past swank · past swonk · past swinkt · past swinked · participle past swunk · participle past swunken · participle past swonken · participle past swinkt · participle past swinked

1. archaicintransitiveTo labour, to work hard

   Honour, estate, and all this worldes good, / For which men swinck and sweat incessantly

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 8

   1 more example

   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.

   1922 February 2, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC

2. archaictransitiveTo cause to toil or drudge; to tire or exhaust with labor.

   And the swinked hedger at his supper sat.

   Comus

   1634 October 9 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, →OCLC; 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

   1 more example

   There was no internal graphite coating; instead a metal shield was used to collect the beam current the swinked electrons which in their prime had caused the screen to fluoresce.

   1985, Rodney Dale, The Sinclair Story, page 65

plural Swinks

1. countableuncountableA surname.
2. countableuncountableA town in Otero County, Colorado, United States, named after George W. Swink.