swath

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English swathe,^[2][1] inherited from Old English swæþ (“track, trace, footstep”), also swaþu,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from Proto-Germanic *swaþō.^[1] Barnhart traces the two Old English forms to Proto-Germanic neuter and feminine stems.^[7] It is cognate with Old Frisian swethe (“limit, boundary”),^[7][6][2] Middle Low German swat and swāde (“furrow, swath”),^[3][7][5] Middle Dutch swat,^[6][3] Dutch zwad and zwade,^[3][5][2] Middle High German swade^[3][6][5] and German Schwade,^[1] and with Old Norse svað (“a slippery place”).^[8][7] The OED notes that in Frisian, Low German and early modern Dutch the related word also meant a scythe, and calls the further relations and original meaning of the Germanic root uncertain;^[3] Orel and Etymonline also leave its origin open.^[8][2] Barnhart and Wiktionary derive it from Proto-Indo-European *swey- (“to bend, turn, swing”), which Wiktionary calls uncertain,^[7][1] and Skeat suggested that the earliest meaning was a shred or slice.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A track or trace, literal and figurative: Old English, first in King Alfred's translation of Boethius; the sense is obsolete after 1325.^[3][5] Bosworth–Toller gives the Old English word as a track or the mark left by something moving, a footprint, and a vestige or trace.^[4]

Semantic evolution

From a track, the word passed to the line left by the mower: by about 1325 it meant a row of grass or grain as it lies when cut, and a strip of grassland as a measure of land.^[3][2][5] The space covered by one sweep of the scythe is recorded from about 1475,^[3][2][7] and growing grass or grain ready for mowing from 1577.^[3] From the early 17th century, first in Drayton, it could mean any broad strip or belt of something,^[3][7][2] From 1852 it was also used of something cut down like grass, especially soldiers mown down in battle.^[3] Johnson (1755) defined it as a line of grass cut down by the mower, quoting Tusser and Shakespeare.^[10] American slang of the 1840s had to cut a swath, to make a showy display, now usually to cut a wide swath.^[3] In northern English dialect the word had many farming compounds, such as swath-balk, the ridge left between the sweeps of the scythe, and swath-rake, a wide wooden rake for gathering scattered hay.^[11]

Timeline

• Old English – a track, trace or footprint (obsolete after 1325).^[3][4]
• c. 1325 – a row of grass or grain as it lies when mown; a strip of grassland as a measure.^[3][2]
• c. 1475 – the space covered by one sweep of the scythe.^[3][2][7]
• 1577 – growing grass or grain ready for mowing.^[3]
• c. 1606 – a broad track, belt or strip of something.^[3][7]
• 1776 – the spelling swath for grassland or sward, a variant of swarth.^[3]
• 1848 – to cut a swath, in American slang, to make a showy display.^[3]
• 1852 – something cut down like grass, especially troops in battle.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. The width covered by one sweep of a scythe or of the blade of a mowing machine.^[12][6][3]
2. The strip or path cut in one course of such mowing.^[12][6]
3. A row of cut grass or grain left lying after mowing; a windrow.^[12][6][3]
4. A long, broad strip or belt of anything: The storm flattened a swath of forest two miles wide.^[12][6][3]
5. cut a wide swath: to make a showy display.^[3]

Word family

• swather

Related words

• swathe
• swarth
• swatch

Usage notes

The word is also spelled swathe, the spelling under which the OED enters it;^[3][12][6] Weekley thought the form swathe partly due to the unrelated swathe, a band.^[13] That word, a wrapping or bandage, with the verb swathe, to wrap, comes from Old English swaþian and has a separate origin.^[3][6][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
5. ^ a b c d e f Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
9. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
12. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt