swapan

Forms

swāpan (strong class 7; third-person singular present swǣpþ, past singular swēop, past plural swēopon)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *swaipan, from Proto-Germanic *swaipaną (“to sweep; to swing; to wrap”).^[1] Old Saxon has the preterite forswēp (“drove out”).^[2] The verb is shared with Old High German sweifan (“to fight”) and Old Norse sveipa (“to sweep, stroke, wrap”), which has relics of strong forms.^[2][3][4] Orel suggests a link with Avestan forms meaning “rapid” and “swinging the whip”.^[2] Köbler places it under Pokorny's Proto-Indo-European *su̯ē̆i- (“to bend, turn, swing”), and Wiktionary takes the Proto-Germanic verb as the o-grade causative to *swippōną.^[5][1]

It is a strong verb of the seventh class with Proto-Germanic /ai/ in the present; its preterite ⟨swēop⟩ is probably analogical.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first dated record is in the Old English Bede, in the Tanner manuscript (dated by Gneuss and Lapidge to the beginning of the tenth or the first half of the eleventh century): Bishop Aidan saw swapendum windum þone leg þæs fyres & þone rec up ofer þære burge wallas ahefenne “the flame and smoke of the fire raised by sweeping winds over the walls of the town”.^[7][8][9]

Semantic evolution

Bosworth and Toller distinguish the transitive senses “sweep with a broom”, as in Ælfric's Grammar ic swape for Latin “verro”, and “swing with a sweeping motion”, as in Christ where the Lord swapeð sigemece “swings the victorious sword”, from the intransitive sense of a sweeping wind or sea.^[9][8] The sense “wrap” belongs to the compounds with be- and ymb-.^[9]

It continued as Middle English swopen “to sweep (a floor, a house)”, recorded from about 1225.^[10] Etymonline derives English swoop from a dialectal survival of the verb, first in the 1560s.^[11]

Timeline

• s. x in. or s. xi¹ – swapendum windum “with sweeping winds” in the Old English Bede (Tanner 10).^[7][8]
• s. x² – Swapeð sigemece “swings the victorious sword” in Christ in the Exeter Book.^[12][8]
• c. 1225 – Middle English swopen “sweep (a floor)”.^[10]
• 1560s – English swoop.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. to sweep with a broom.^[9][13]
2. to swing or brandish (a sword).^[9][13]
3. (intransitive) to rush, drive (of wind or sea).^[9][5]

Word family

• āswāpan
• forswāpan
• tōswāpan
• ymbswāpan
• beswāpan
• ġeswāpan

Descendants

• Middle English swopen (→ English swoop; Scots swap; Scots swape)^[1]

Related words

• swipu

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 390
3. ^ Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de
4. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 339
5. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. swāpan
6. ^ Hogg, Richard M.; Fulk, R. D. (2011), A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, p. § 6.76
7. ^ a b Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 531
8. ^ a b c d Healey, Antonette diPaolo; Price Wilkin, John; Xiang, Xin, eds. (2009), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project
9. ^ a b c d e f Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 944
10. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
11. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 223
13. ^ a b Sweet, Henry (1896), The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 188