Word.ws English Dictionary

swan's road

swan's road noun: the ocean; the open sea.

Noun

the swan's road

  1. (literary, rare, kenning) The ocean; the open sea.
    • Cwæð, hē gūðcyning
      Ofer swanrāde
      Sēcean wolde,
      Mǣrne þēoden,
      Þā him wæs manna þearf.1838 July, [Henry Wadsworth Longfellow], “Art[icle] IV.—1. A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language, […]. By the Rev. J[oseph] Bosworth. […] 2. King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Version of Boëthius, “De...
    • Ship with me boldly,
      Follow me gaily,
      Over the swan's road[.]1866, C[harles] Kingsley, “How Hereward Succoured a Princess of Cornwall”, in Hereward the Wake, “Last of the English.” […], volume I, London; Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC...

Synonyms of swan's road

Origin of swan's road

Calque of Old English swanrād, from swan (“swan”) + rād (“road”).

Questions about swan's road

What does swan's road mean?
Swan's road means the ocean; the open sea.
What part of speech is swan's road?
Swan's road is a noun.

Words near swan's road in the dictionary

  1. Swan Vale
  2. Swan View
  3. Swan Village
  4. swan's bath
  5. swan's down
  6. swan's road
  7. swan's-down
  8. swan-dive
  9. swan-dived
  10. swan-dives
  11. swan-diving

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: swan's road (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.

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