Word.ws English Dictionary

May-day sweep

UK/meɪ deɪ swiːp//meɪ deɪ swip/

May-day sweep noun: one of the sweeps (chimney sweeps), clad in bright clothes and garlands and carrying a blackened broom, in a May Day parade.

Noun

May-day sweep (plural May-day sweeps)

  1. (largely historical) One of the sweeps (chimney sweeps), clad in bright clothes and garlands and carrying a blackened broom, in a May Day parade.
    • The common herd of mortals invent excuses : they shuffle like a May-day sweep, and lie like the prospectus of a new Magazine.1823, New Monthly Magazine, volume 8, page 355
    • […] preceded by a drum and fife, and followed by the successful marksman, who, dressed out with flowers and ribands as fantastically as a May-day sweep in England, expressed his joy by dancing and pirouetting amidst his friends, who congratulated and cheered him.1829, W. Brockedon, The Passes of the Alps, printed in The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, page 345...

Examples of May-day sweep in a sentence

  • Thanks to certain alchemic pens, which have touched even garbage to gold-paper, murder has been as fine, and withal as jocund among us, as a May-day sweep.1843, Punch, volume 5, page 158:
  • […] but anything would have been better than sitting at table with a thing only fit for a May-day sweep on one's head.1876, Lady Barker, The Kafir at Home, printed in The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, volume 23 (87?), page 221...

Forms of May-day sweep

pluralMay-day sweeps
alternative formMay Day sweep

Origin of May-day sweep

From May Day (“workers' spring holiday”) + sweep (“ellipsis of chimney sweep”).

Questions about May-day sweep

What does May-day sweep mean?
May-day sweep means one of the sweeps (chimney sweeps), clad in bright clothes and garlands and carrying a blackened broom, in a May Day parade.
How do you use May-day sweep in a sentence?
Thanks to certain alchemic pens, which have touched even garbage to gold-paper, murder has been as fine, and withal as jocund among us, as a May-day sweep.
What part of speech is May-day sweep?
May-day sweep is a noun.
How do you pronounce May-day sweep?
May-day sweep is pronounced /meɪ deɪ swiːp/ (UK).
What is the plural of May-day sweep?
The plural of May-day sweep is May-day sweeps.

Words near May-day sweep in the dictionary

  1. may'st
  2. may't
  3. may've
  4. May-bean
  5. May-beans
  6. May-day sweep
  7. May-day sweeps
  8. may-issue
  9. May-ladies
  10. May-lady
  11. may-pole

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: May-day sweep (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-May-day_sweep.ogg, en-au-May-day sweep.ogg.

Cite this entry: “May-day sweep.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/may-day_sweep. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.