swart

comparative swarter · superlative swartest

1. Of a dark hue; moderately black; swarthy; tawny.

   1400s: Thomas Occleve, Hymns to the Virgin Men schalle then sone se / Att mydday hytt shalle swarte be

   5 more examples

   A nation strange, with visage swart

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

   Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious,

   c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]

   Of shades , and wanton winds , and gushing brooks , On whose fresh lap the swart - star sparely looks

   1637 (date written; published 1638), John Milton, “Lycidas”, in Poems of Mr. John Milton, […], London: […] Ruth Raworth for Humphrey Mosely, […], published 1646, →OCLC

   I'll choose a gaoler, whose swart monstrous face Shall be a hell to look upon […]

   1819, John Keats, Otho the Great, act II, scene I, verses 91-92

   The merry soldiers footing it with the swart savage maids

   1836, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Old Ticonderoga

2. UKdialectalBlack.
3. obsoleteGloomy; malignant.

   Suddenly the swart figure of Time stood up before the gods, with both hands dripping with blood and a red sword dangling idly from his fingers, and said: “Sardathrion is gone! I have overthrown it!”

   1906, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], Time and the Gods, London: William Heineman, →OCLC, page 4

1. UKdialectalBlack or dark dyestuff.

present singular third person swarts · participle present swarting · participle past swarted · past swarted

1. transitiveTo make swart or tawny; blacken; tan.

   to swart a living part

   1 more example

   […] the heate of the Sun, whose fervor may swarte a living part, and even black a dead or dissolving flesh,

   1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica

1. obsoleteuncountableObsolete spelling of sward.

   1 more example

   Howbeit where the rocks and quarrie grounds are, I take the swart of the earth to be so thin, that no tree of anie greatnesse, other than shrubs and bushes, is able to grow or prosper long therein for want of sufficient moisture wherewith to feed them with fresh humour, or at the leastwise of mould […]

   1587, Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland

plural swarts

1. IrelandalternativedialectalVariant of swath.

plural Swarts

1. A surname.