Word.ws English Dictionary

sweare

sweare is the obsolete spelling of swear.

Meaning of swear

Verb (1)

swear (third-person singular simple present swears, present participle swearing, simple past swore or (archaic) sware, past participle sworn or (nonstandard) swore)

  1. (ambitransitive) To take an oath, to promise intensely, solemnly, and/or with legally binding effect.
    • The knight swore not to return to the palace until he had found the treasure.
    Synonyms:
    pledge, vow
  2. (transitive) To take an oath that an assertion is true.
    • The witness swore that the person she had seen running out of the bank was a foot shorter than the accused.
    Synonyms:
    depose, affirm, testify
  3. (transitive) To promise intensely that something is true; to strongly assert.
    • I swear I don't know what you're talking about.
  4. (transitive) To administer an oath to (a person).
    • Let the witness be sworn.
  5. (ambitransitive) To use offensive, profane, or obscene language.
    • An Australian was once appointed on contract, but he swore too much.1956, Anthony Burgess, Time for a Tiger (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 38

Verb (2)

swear (third-person singular simple present swears, present participle swearing, simple past and past participle sweared)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland) To be lazy; rest for a short while during working hours.

See all 13 meanings of swear

Forms of sweare

third-person singular presentsweares
present participleswearing
pastswore
past participlesworne

Questions about sweare

What is sweare the obsolete spelling of?
Sweare is the obsolete spelling of swear.

Words near sweare in the dictionary

  1. swear upon
  2. swear word
  3. swear words
  4. swearable
  5. sweard
  6. sweare
  7. sweared
  8. Swearengin
  9. Swearengins
  10. swearer
  11. swearers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sweare (page history and authors); swear (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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Cite this entry: “sweare.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sweare. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.