forswink
forswink verb: to exhaust by labour; overwork.
Verb
forswink (third-person singular simple present forswinks, present participle forswinking, simple past forswank or forswonk or forswonck, past participle forswunken or forswunk or forswonk or forswonck)
- To exhaust by labour; overwork.
- She is my goddess plain,
And I her shepherd's swain,
Albe[it] forswonk and forswat I am.1810, original 1579, Edmund Spenser, The Shepheard's Calender - If indeed he had so turned from Latin texts to garden-tools, he would certainly have been forswunk.1943, Ivor John Carnegie Brown, Just Another Word: Comprising A Word in Your Ear & Just Another Word, page 112
- She is my goddess plain,
Forms of forswink
| third-person singular present | forswinks |
|---|---|
| present participle | forswinking |
| past | forswank |
| past | forswonk |
| past | forswonck |
| past participle | forswunken |
| past participle | forswunk |
| past participle | forswonk |
| past participle | forswonck |
Origin of forswink
From Middle English forswinken, equivalent to for- + swink.
Questions about forswink
- What does forswink mean?
- Forswink means to exhaust by labour; overwork.
- What part of speech is forswink?
- Forswink is a verb.
- What is the past tense of forswink?
- The past tense of forswink is forswank.
Words near forswink in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: forswink (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “forswink.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/forswink. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.