swad
/swɒd/US/swɑd/
swad noun: a bunch, clump, mass.
Noun
swad (plural swads)
- A bunch, clump, mass
- "[…]Ye'd oughta see th' swad a' chil'ren I've got, an' all like that."1895 October, Stephen Crane, chapter X, in The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 102
- A crowd; a group of people.
- A boor, lout.
- Sham’st thou not coistrel, loathsome dunghill swad.1591, unknown author, The Troublesome Reign of King John, scene 2
- There was one busy fellow was their leader, / A blunt, squat swad, but lower than yourself.1633 (first performance), Ben Jonson, “A Tale of a Tub. A Comedy […]”, in The Works of Beniamin Jonson, […] (Third Folio), London: […] Thomas Hodgkin, for H[enry] Herringman, E. Brewster, T. Bassett...
- A thin layer of refuse at the bottom of a seam.
- A cod, or pod, as of beans or peas.
- They must bee gathered in the decrease of the moone, presently vpon their being ripe, for else they drie vp and fall out of their swads:1600, Charles Estienne, Maison Rustique, Or The Covntrie Farme, page 695
- ... the Bean is not seen till first it be unhusk'd, and that its swad or hull be shaled, and pilled from off it : […]1653, François Rabelais, The Works of Mr. Francis Rabelais, Doctor in Physick: Containing Five Books of the Lives, Heroick Deeds, and Sayings of Gargantua, and His Sonne Pantagruel, Together with the...
Examples of swad in a sentence
- Swad, in the north, is a peascod shell — thence used for an empty, shallow-headed fellow.1656, Thomas Blount, Glossographia:
- ... it is the stem and leaf that is wanted , more than the swad or grain.1840, John French Burke, British Husbandry: Exhibiting the Farming Practice in Various Parts of the United Kingdom ..., page 19:
- "The pods hang down, and only the swad is used for feeding cattle." Why , then , does the Chancellor of the Exchequer tax locust beans as a kind of wheat?1902, The Speaker, page 100:
Synonyms of swad
Forms of swad
| plural | swads |
|---|---|
| alternative form | swod |
Origin of swad
Related to swaddle?
Words that rhyme with swad
Questions about swad
- What does swad mean?
- Swad means a bunch, clump, mass.
- How do you use swad in a sentence?
- Swad, in the north, is a peascod shell — thence used for an empty, shallow-headed fellow.
- What part of speech is swad?
- Swad is a noun.
- How do you pronounce swad?
- Swad is pronounced /swɒd/ (UK).
- What is the plural of swad?
- The plural of swad is swads.
Words near swad in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: swad (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-swad.wav.
Cite this entry: “swad.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/swad. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.