Swart

From Middle English swart, from Old English sweart ("swarthy, black, dark; gloomy; evil, infamous"), from Proto-Germanic *swartaz ("black, dark-coloured"), from Proto-Indo-European *swordo- ("dirty, dark, black"). Cognate with Scots swart ("black"), West Frisian swart ("black"), Dutch zwart ("black, dark"), Low German swart ("black"), German schwarz ("black"), Danish sort ("black"), Swedish svart ("black"), Icelandic svartur ("black"), Latin sordes ("dirt, filth"). Compare sordid, surd.

Full definition of swart

Adjective

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
• 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 2 - A nation strange, with visage swart
• Shakespeare John, III-i - Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious,
• 1819, , Otho the Great, Act II, Scene I, verses 91-92I'll choose a gaoler, whose swart monstrous faceShall be a hell to look upon …
• 1836, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Old Ticonderoga - The merry soldiers footing it with the swart savage maids
2. (UK dialectal) Black.
3. (obsolete) Gloomy; malignant.
• 1906, Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany, Time and the Gods - 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!”

Derived terms

• swarten
• Swart star, (Rare): the Dog Star -- so called from its appearing during the hot weather of summer, which makes swart the countenance.
• swarthy (< swarty)

Noun

1. (UK dialectal) Black or dark dyestuff; something of a certain swart; something of a certain ocker.

From Middle English swarten, from Old English sweartian ("to become black; make black"), from Proto-Germanic *swartōną ("to blacken, make black"), from Proto-Indo-European *swordos ("black, dirty").

Verb

1. (transitive) To make swart or tawny; as, to swart a living part; blacken; tan.
• 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica - the heate of the Sun, whose fervor may swarte a living part, and even black a dead or dissolving flesh,

Variant of sward.

Noun

1. Obsolete spelling of sward
• 1587: Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland http://www.archive.org/stream/holinshedschroni01holi#page/356/mode/1upHowbeit 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...

Anagrams

• Straw, straw, warts