Word.ws English Dictionary

swidden

/ˈswɪdn̩/

swidden noun: an area of land that has been cleared by cutting the vegetation and burning it; slash and burn.

Noun

swidden (plural swiddens)

  1. An area of land that has been cleared by cutting the vegetation and burning it; slash and burn.
    • Kamiali Village is a community of swidden horticulturists and fishers lying 80 kilometers in a south-southeasterly direction along the coast from the City of Lae, Papua New Guinea.2007 Fall, F. L. (Rick) Bein, “Food Garden Capacity and Population Growth: A Case in Papua New Guinea.”, in Focus on Geography, volume 50, number 2, pages 28–33
    • These facts reinforced the view that the Maya drew their basic sustenance from corn, most of it grown on slash-and-burn plots known as swiddens.2009 Jul/Aug, Roger Atwood, “Maya Roots”, in Archaeology, volume 62, number 4

Verb

swidden (third-person singular simple present swiddens, present participle swiddening, simple past and past participle swiddened)

  1. To clear an area of land by cutting and burning.
    • The reason, Scott says, is that swiddening provides a freedom that fixed agriculture does not.2009 February 13, Drake Bennett, quoting James Scott, “The mystery of Zomia”, in The Boston Globe, Boston

Forms of swidden

Noun
pluralswiddens
Verb
third-person singular presentswiddens
present participleswiddening
past participleswiddened
pastswiddened

Origin of swidden

Possibly from a dialectal form *swiden of Middle English swithen, past participle of Middle English swithen (“to burn, scorch, singe”), from Old Norse svíða (“to singe, burn”). Compare also Old Norse sviðinn (“burnt, singed”, past participle). Alternatively, from Old Norse sviðna (“to be burned”) or Old High German swedan (“to be burned”). Either way, probably ultimately from Proto-Germanic *swīþaną. First attested in 1868. If their respective theories align, then a distant cognate of German Schwyz, hence Swiss.

Words formed from swidden

Words that rhyme with swidden

Questions about swidden

What does swidden mean?
Swidden means an area of land that has been cleared by cutting the vegetation and burning it; slash and burn.
What part of speech is swidden?
Swidden can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce swidden?
Swidden is pronounced /ˈswɪdn̩/.
What is the plural of swidden?
The plural of swidden is swiddens.

Words near swidden in the dictionary

  1. Swick
  2. Swickard
  3. Swickards
  4. swicken
  5. swicy
  6. swidden
  7. swiddened
  8. swiddener
  9. swiddeners
  10. swiddening
  11. swiddens

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: swidden (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-swidden.wav.

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