Swive

//swaɪv// verb

verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To copulate with (a woman). archaic, transitive

    "'Tis sure the sauciest prick that e'er did swive"

  2. 2
    To cut a crop in a sweeping or rambling manner, hence to reap; cut for harvest. archaic, dialectal, transitive

    "The cradled scythes of the Vale of Towey were scarcely known in the Vale of Teivy; and the swiving method of reaping wheat in the latter, was as little known in the former ..."

Synonyms

All synonyms
any of thesaurus:copulate + "with"ballbangbaufbe withbed

Example

More examples

"'Tis sure the sauciest prick that e'er did swive"

Etymology

From Middle English swiven, from Old English swīfan (“to move, sweep, wend, revolve”), from Proto-Germanic *swībaną (“to wipe, sweep”). Cognate with Old Frisian swīva, swīfa (“to waver”), Old Norse svīfa (“to drift, ramble, rove”), Norwegian Nynorsk sviva (“to rotate, wander”). Related to Old English swift (“swift”), Middle English swyvel (“swivel”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.