Added 9 October 2026
swine
/swaɪn/ noun
Latin root: sūinus Wiktionary
noun Definition from WordNet 3.1, Princeton University. Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about swine at Wordnik → Where our words come from →
- Stout-bodied short-legged omnivorous animals.
Origin
From Middle English swyn, swin; from Old English swīn; from Proto-West Germanic *swīn; from Proto-Germanic *swīną; from an adjectival form of Proto-Indo-European *suH- (“pig”). * In modern use, especially as a term of abuse, frequently a calque of German Schwein or its derivatives. * In reference to wolffish, a clipping of swinefish. Cognates Related to West Frisian swyn, Low German Swien, Dutch zwijn, German Schwein, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish svin, Faroese and Icelandic svín, and more distantly to Polish świnia, Russian свинья́ (svinʹjá), Latin sūinus, Latin sūs, Ancient Greek ὗς (hûs), Persian خوک (xuk).
From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)