Word.ws English Dictionary

Swiftian

Swiftian adjective: of or pertaining to Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist, or his works.

Adjective

Swiftian (comparative more Swiftian, superlative most Swiftian)

  1. Of or pertaining to Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist, or his works.
    • Swiftian satire
    • Nor are his ironic-human touches wanting. Almost at its birth he satirises, in his own quiet Swiftian way, an absurd tendency which has grown mightily since, and flourishes now: […]1919, George Saintsbury, A History of the French Novel, volume 2
  2. Of or pertaining to Taylor Swift (1989–), American singer-songwriter, or her musical and lyrical style.
    • Swiftian chorus
    • You could hear Martin and Shellback's touch in the bright, punchy sound of those songs, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “I Knew You Were Trouble,” and “22.” Yet the songs are unmistakably Swiftian; […].2016, Tyler Conroy, Taylor Swift: This Is Our Song, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 156

Examples of Swiftian in a sentence

  • It was my intent to mix serious issues and facts with irony and Swiftian satire to engage readers and make my points.2011 November 17, James Fallows, quoting Paul V. Kane, “Selling Taiwan to Mainland China: The Author Explains His ‘Swiftian’ Intent”, in...
  • Still, at the movies, surrounded by a matinee crowd of older Swifties and their kids, the Swiftian portal exerted its pull.2025 October 16, Mitch Therieau, “Taylor Swift Is Our Biggest Cinematic Universe. But the Magic Is Fading.”, in The New York Times...

Forms of Swiftian

comparativemore Swiftian
superlativemost Swiftian

Origin of Swiftian

From Swift + -ian.

Questions about Swiftian

What does Swiftian mean?
Swiftian means of or pertaining to Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist, or his works.
How do you use Swiftian in a sentence?
It was my intent to mix serious issues and facts with irony and Swiftian satire to engage readers and make my points.
What part of speech is Swiftian?
Swiftian is an adjective.

Words near Swiftian in the dictionary

  1. swiftest
  2. swiftfoot
  3. swiftfooted
  4. swiftfootedness
  5. swifthanded
  6. Swiftian
  7. swiftie
  8. Swiftiedom
  9. swifties
  10. Swiftism
  11. swiftlet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Swiftian (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:

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