swoon

• swound (archaic)

• enPR: swo͝on, IPA^(key): /swuːn/
• Rhymes: -uːn

From Middle English swoune, swone, from the verb (see below).

swoon (plural swoons)

1. A faint.
   • 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula Chapter 21

     "I felt my strength fading away, and I was in a half swoon. How long this horrible thing lasted I know not, but it seemed that a long time must have passed before he took his foul, awful, sneering mouth away. I saw it drip with the fresh blood!"

2. An infatuation.

From Middle English swounen, swonen (“to faint”), and aswoune (“in a swoon”), both ultimately from Old English ġeswōgen (“insensible, senseless, dead”), past participle of swōgan (“to make a sound, overrun, suffocate”) (compare Old English āswōgan (“to cover over, overcome”)), from Proto-Germanic *swōganą (“to make a noise”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)weh₂gʰ-. Cognate with Low German swogen (“to sigh, groan”), Dutch zwoegen (“to groan, breathe heavily”), dialectal Norwegian søgja (“to whistle, hum, talk loudly”). More at sough.

swoon (third-person singular simple present swoons, present participle swooning, simple past and past participle swooned) (intransitive)

1. To faint, to lose consciousness.

   Synonyms: black out, faint, lose consciousness, pass out

   • 1885, Richard F. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 539:

     I threw myself down on the island ground, like a dead man, and drowned in desolation swooned away, nor did I return to my senses till next morning, when the sun rose and revived me.

   • 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Gods of Mars‎, HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2008:

     I dropped the vessel quickly to a lower level. Nor was I a moment too soon. The girl had swooned.

   • 2011 August 2, “Perry the Platypus”, in Phineas and Ferb: Across the 1st and 2nd Dimensions, Walt Disney Records, performed by Randy Crenshaw:

     He's got more than just mad skill,
     He's got a beaver tail and a bill.
     And the women swoon whenever they hear him say…

2. To be overwhelmed by emotion, especially infatuation.
3. To make a moan, sigh, or some other sound expressing infatuation or affection.

   The girls swooned at the picture of their favorite actor.

   • 2013 (November 2) Pinky 10 minutes into episode 25 ("The Spy Who Slimed Me") of TV series "Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures" per closed captions

     [Swoons] For sure. He's totally dreamy. Uh--but my heart still belongs to you, Pac-ums.

• swooningly