sweep
/swip/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.97 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "to sweep a floor, the street, or a chimney"
- "I will sweep it with the besom of destruction."
- "The wind sweeps across the plain."
- "The offended countess swept out of the ballroom."
- "[H]as the course of the argument so accustomed you to agreeing that you were swept by it into a ready assent?"
- "Drifting thus, we made fast time down the bank through Cove Bay, and at 72 m.p.h. came sweeping round the curve past Girdleness light house, and so to the first sight of Aberdeen itself."
Etymology
From Middle English swepen, from Proto-West Germanic *swaipijan (unattested in Old English), from Proto-Germanic *swaipijaną. Cognate with Early Modern West Frisian swiepe (“whip, cleanse, sweep”), from Old Frisian swēpa, suepa (“sweep”). More distantly related to Old Norse sveipa (whence Swedish svepa). See also swoop.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: swepen, *swaipijan, *swaipijaną
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /swip/
- British English: /swiːp/
Usage
- Transitive verb
- Intransitive verb
- Obsolete
- American usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
Synonyms
swing
They've swept to power with an overwhelming majority.
end run
sweep oar
expanse
slam
chimneysweeper
chimneysweep