Word.ws English Dictionary

swinking

swinking is the present participle and gerund of swink.

Meaning of swink

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)

  1. (archaic, intransitive) 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
  2. (archaic, transitive) 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...

See all 5 meanings of swink

Questions about swinking

What is swinking the present participle and gerund of?
Swinking is the present participle and gerund of swink.

Words near swinking in the dictionary

  1. swink
  2. swinked
  3. swinker
  4. swinkers
  5. swinketh
  6. swinking
  7. swinkle
  8. swinks
  9. swinkt
  10. Swinnerton
  11. swinney

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: swinking (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.

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