swink
/swɪŋk/
swink noun: toil, work, drudgery.
Noun
swink (countable and uncountable, plural swinks)
Verb
swink (third-person singular simple present swinks, present participle swinking, simple past swank or swonk or swinkt or swinked, past participle swunk or swunken or swonken or swinkt or swinked)
- To labour, to work hard
- Honour, estate, and all this worldes good, / For which men swinck and sweat incessantly1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 8
- And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white flames that they fix in the horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously.1922 February 2, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC
- To cause to toil or drudge; to tire or exhaust with labor.
- And the swinked hedger at his supper sat.1634 October 9 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey...
- There was no internal graphite coating; instead a metal shield was used to collect the beam current the swinked electrons which in their prime had caused the screen to fluoresce.1985, Rodney Dale, The Sinclair Story, page 65
Proper noun capitalized: Swink
Swink (countable and uncountable, plural Swinks)
- A surname.
- A town in Otero County, Colorado, United States, named after George W. Swink.
Forms of swink
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | swinks |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | swinks |
| present participle | swinking |
| past | swank |
| past | swonk |
| past | swinkt |
| past | swinked |
| past participle | swunk |
| past participle | swunken |
| past participle | swonken |
| past participle | swinkt |
| past participle | swinked |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Swinks |
Origin of swink
From Middle English swink, from Old English swinc (“toil, work, effort; hardship; the produce of labour”).
From Middle English swynken, from Old English swincan (“to labour, work”), from Proto-Germanic *swinkaną (“to swing, bend”). Cognate with Old Norse svinka (“to work”).
Words formed from swink
Words that rhyme with swink
Questions about swink
- What does swink mean?
- Swink means toil, work, drudgery.
- What part of speech is swink?
- Swink can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce swink?
- Swink is pronounced /swɪŋk/.
- What is the plural of swink?
- The plural of swink is swinks.
Words near swink in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: swink (page history and authors); Swink (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-swink.wav.
Cite this entry: “swink.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/swink. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.