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swink

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swink¹

  • /swɪŋk/

Rhymes with -ɪŋk

Where it comes from

From Middle English swink, from Old English swinc (“toil, work, effort; hardship; the produce of labour”).

noun swinks

  1. archaic, countable, uncountable Toil, work, drudgery. Dead on this homecoming cue Jack came home, his hands sheerfree of salesman’s swink, ready for Enderby.

swink²

  • /swɪŋk/

Rhymes with -ɪŋk

Where it comes from

From Middle English swynken, from Old English swincan (“to labour, work”), from Proto-Germanic *swinkaną (“to swing, bend”). Cognate with Old Norse svinka (“to work”).

verb swinks · swinking · swank · swonk · swinkt · swinked

  1. archaic, intransitive To labour, to work hard Honour, estate, and all this worldes good, / For which men swinck and sweat incessantly
  2. archaic, transitive To cause to toil or drudge; to tire or exhaust with labor. And the swinked hedger at his supper sat.

Swink³

proper noun Swinks

  1. countable, uncountable A surname.
  2. countable, uncountable A town in Otero County, Colorado, United States, named after George W. Swink.

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MLA

"swink." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/swink. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

swink. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/swink

Chicago

"swink." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/swink.

BibTeX
@misc{swink_2026,
  title = {swink},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/swink},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}