swart

• (UK) IPA^(key): /swɔː(ɹ)t/
• (US) IPA^(key): /swɔɹt/
• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)t

From Middle English swart, from Old English sweart, from Proto-Germanic *swartaz.

swart (comparative swarter, superlative swartest)

1. Of a dark hue; moderately black; swarthy; tawny.
   • 1400s: Thomas Occleve, Hymns to the Virgin - Men schalle then sone se / Att mydday hytt shalle swarte be
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 2 - A nation strange, with visage swart
   • c. 1596, William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act III, scene i]:

     Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious,
   • 1819, John Keats, Otho the Great, Act II, Scene I, verses 91-92

     I'll choose a gaoler, whose swart monstrous face

     Shall be a hell to look upon […]

   • 1836, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Old Ticonderoga - The merry soldiers footing it with the swart savage maids
   • 1925 Ezra Pound, "Canto I"

     unpierced ever

     With glitter of sun rays

     Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven

     Swartest night stretched over wretched men there.

2. (Britain dialectal) Black.
3. (obsolete) Gloomy; malignant.
   • 1905, Samuel Major Gardenhire, The Silence of Mrs. Harrold - Page 277:

     The keeping eunuchs were at back, solemn in stately rows, bespeared and bescimitared, the Danish, Irish, and German of their countenances lost in the daub which made them swart.

   • 1906, Lord Dunsany, Time and the Gods - Suddenly the swart figure of Time stood up before the gods, with both hands dripping with blood and a red sword dangling idly from his fingers, and said: “Sardathrion is gone! I have overthrown it!”

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Milton to this entry?)

• forswart
• swarten
• swartness
• swarthy (< swarty)

swart (plural swarts)

1. (Britain dialectal) Black or dark dyestuff; something of a certain swart; something of a certain ocker.

• swarth

From Middle English swarten, from Old English sweartian, from Proto-Germanic *swartōną.

swart (third-person singular simple present swarts, present participle swarting, simple past and past participle swarted)

1. (transitive) To make swart or tawny; blacken; tan.

   to swart a living part

   • 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica - the heate of the Sun, whose fervor may swarte a living part, and even black a dead or dissolving flesh,

Variant of sward.

swart (uncountable)

1. Obsolete spelling of sward
   • 1587: Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland

     Howbeit where the rocks and quarrie grounds are, I take the swart of the earth to be so thin, that no tree of anie greatnesse, other than shrubs and bushes, is able to grow or prosper long therein for want of sufficient moisture wherewith to feed them with fresh humour, or at the leastwise of mould...

• swart in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1914

• Straw, straw, warts, wrats

From Dutch zwart , from Proto-Germanic *swartaz.

swart (attributive swart, comparative swarter, superlative swartste)

1. black
2. Black

• blank

From Old Saxon swart, from Proto-Germanic *swartaz.

swart (comparative swärter, superlative swärtst)

1. black

swart

1. Romanization of 𐍃𐍅𐌰𐍂𐍄

From Old Dutch swart, from Proto-Germanic *swartaz.

swart

1. black

This adjective needs an inflection-table template.

• Dutch: zwart
  • Afrikaans: swart
• Limburgish: zwart
• West Flemish: zwort

• “swart”, in Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, 2000
• “swart (I)”, in Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, 1929

• (Early ME) sweorte, swearte, sweart, swærte
• swarte, suart, suarte, swert, swerte

From Old English sweart, from Proto-Germanic *swartaz; compare Middle Dutch swart, Middle Low German swart, Middle High German swarz.

• IPA^(key): /swart/, /swɛrt/

swart (inflected form swarte, comparative swarter)

1. Dark, oppressive, blackened.
2. Black; swart.
   1. Black-skinned, swarthy; having dark skin.
   2. (rare) Bruised, heavily wounded.
3. (rare) Evil, malign.

• swarten
• swartish
• swartnesse

• English: swart, swarth
• Scots: swart

• “swart (adj.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-06-23.

From Proto-Germanic *swartaz.

swart

1. black

• Middle Low German: swart
  • Low German:
    • German Low German: swart, schwart

      Hamburgisch: swatt

    • Westphalian:

      Münsterländisch: swatt

      Paderbornisch: schwart

      Ravensbergisch-Lippisch: swārt, swat

      Sauerländisch: schwart, schwatt, schwuat, schwoart, schwuart, schwoert

      Westmünsterländisch: schwatt, schwott, schwart

      → German: schwatt

  • Plautdietsch: schwoat

From Middle English swart, from Old English sweart, from Proto-Germanic *swartaz.

swart (plural swarts)

1. Black or dark dyestuff.

From Old Norse svartr.

swart (comparative mair swart, superlative maist swart)

1. Black; swarthy.

• swartback

From Old Frisian swart, swert, from Proto-Germanic *swartaz.

swart

1. black