Word.ws English Dictionary

swerve

UK/swɜːv//swɝv/

swerve verb: to stray; to wander; to rove.

Verb

swerve (third-person singular simple present swerves, present participle swerving, simple past and past participle swerved)

  1. (archaic) To stray; to wander; to rove.
    • A maid thitherward did run, / To catch her sparrow which from her did swerve.c. 1580 (date written), Philip Sidney, “The Fourth Booke”, in [Mary Sidney], editor, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia […] [The New Arcadia], London: […] [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie...
  2. To go out of a straight line; to deflect.
    • with the slipping of the pommel , the point swervedc. 1580 (date written), Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “[The Thirde Booke] Chapter 24”, in [Fulke Greville; Matthew Gwinne; John Florio], editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New...
  3. To wander from any line prescribed, or from a rule or duty; to depart from what is established by law, duty, custom, or the like; to deviate.
    • I swerve not from thy commandments.1785, The Book of Common Prayer According to the Use in King's Chapel
    • They swerve from the strict letter of the law.1702–1704, Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon, (please specify |book=I to XVI), in The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed...
  4. To bend; to incline; to give way.
    • The battle swerved.1667, John Milton, “Book VI”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...
  5. To climb or move upward by winding or turning.
    • The tree was high; / Yet nimbly up from bough to bough I swerved.c. 1692, John Dryden, Amaryllis
  6. To turn aside or deviate to avoid impact.
  7. Of a projectile, to travel in a curved line
    • Snodgrass also saw a free-kick swerve just wide before Arsenal, with Walcott and Fabregas by now off the bench, turned their vastly superior possession into chances in the closing moments2011 January 8, Chris Bevan, “Arsenal 1 - 1 Leeds”, in BBC
  8. To drive in the trajectory of another vehicle to stop it, to cut off.
    • The French invaders, like an infuriated animal that has in its onslaught received a mortal wound, felt that they were perishing, but could not stop, any more than the Russian army, weaker by one half, could help swerving.1869, Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace, Part 10, Chapter 39
  9. (slang, transitive) To go out of one's way to avoid; to snub.
    • If I see that type o' muthafucka in the club I just swerve him.

Noun

swerve (countable and uncountable, plural swerves)

  1. A sudden movement out of a straight line, for example to avoid a collision.
    • The distinction between using a skill subconsciously and employing it in the full knowledge of what was happening made a dramatic difference. I could execute a swerve to avoid an obstacle in a fraction of the time it previously took.1990, American Motorcyclist, volume 44, number 7, page 11
  2. A deviation from duty or custom.
    • […] indubitable evidence of a swerve from the principle of the work.1874, William Edwin Boardman, Faith-work, Or the Labours of Dr. Cullis, in Boston, page 56
  3. Synonym of drift (“sideways movement imparted by spin bowler”).
    Synonyms:
    drift

swerve meaning in Malayalam, Kannada and Sanskrit

swerve in Malayalam

തെറ്റുക, വ്യതിചലിക്കുക, ചായ്വുകാട്ടുക

swerve in Kannada

ಮಾರ್ಗತಪ್ಪಿ ನಡೆ, ಪದಚ್ಯುತನಾಗು, ಸರಕ್ಕನೆ ಚಲಿಸು, ಚೆದರು, ತಿರುಗು, ಬದಲಿಸು

swerve in Sanskrit

to swerve, deviate; to go astray
भ्रंशते bhráṃśate

Examples of swerve in a sentence

  • The car swerved off a road, hit a wall, and fireballed as the petrol tank exploded.
  • The driver swerved and just managed to miss the chicken crossing the road.
  • The bus was travelling at a good lick when it swerved and left the road.

All 30 example sentences with swerve

Synonyms of swerve

Forms of swerve

Verb
third-person singular presentswerves
present participleswerving
past participleswerved
pastswerved
alternative formswarve
Noun
pluralswerves

Past tense of swerve: swerved

Origin of swerve

From Middle English swerven, swarven, from Old English sweorfan (“to file; rub; polish; scour; turn aside”), from Proto-Germanic *swerbaną (“to rub off; wipe; mop”), from Proto-Indo-European *swerbʰ- (“to turn; wipe; sweep”). Cognate with West Frisian swerve (“to wander; roam; swerve”), Dutch zwerven (“to wander; stray; roam”), Low German swarven (“to swerve; wander; riot”), Swedish dialectal svärva (“to wipe”), Icelandic sverfa (“to file”).

Words formed from swerve

Words that rhyme with swerve

9 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about swerve

What does swerve mean?
Swerve means to stray; to wander; to rove.
What is swerve in Malayalam?
Swerve in Malayalam is തെറ്റുക, വ്യതിചലിക്കുക, ചായ്വുകാട്ടുക. See Swerve meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is swerve?
Swerve can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce swerve?
Swerve is pronounced /swɜːv/ (UK).
What is the past tense of swerve?
The past tense of swerve is swerved.

Words near swerve in the dictionary

  1. SWers
  2. swertiajaponin
  3. swertiamarin
  4. swertiapuniside
  5. swertisin
  6. swerve
  7. swerved
  8. swerveless
  9. swerver
  10. swervers
  11. swerves

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: swerve (page history and authors); swerve (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); swerve (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); भ्रंशते (Sanskrit) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-swerve.ogg.

Cite this entry: “swerve.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/swerve. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.