Swot

//swɒt// noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    One who swots; a boffin, nerd, or smart aleck. British, countable, slang, uncountable

    "He liked Tom all right... Sampson and Bullock he could do without, however. Especially Sampson, who was too much of a grammar-school-type swot ever to be quite the thing."

  2. 2
    Acronym of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. abbreviation, acronym, alt-of, uncountable

    "Could you do a SWOT analysis of the business proposal I sent you?"

  3. 3
    an insignificant student who is ridiculed as being affected or boringly studious wordnet
  4. 4
    Work. British, countable, slang, uncountable

    "All I want is — guerre fini, soldat fini; and to go home without burden of any thought save music, and hard swot for a time."

  5. 5
    Vigorous study at an educational institution. British, countable, slang, uncountable
Verb
  1. 1
    To study with effort or determination. Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, intransitive, slang
  2. 2
    study intensively, as before an exam wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
crambeast of burdenbonebonebone upburn the midnight oil

Example

More examples

"Anna is top of the class, but she's not a swot."

Etymology

From a dialectal English word, from Middle English swot, swat, from Old English swāt (“perspiration; sweat”), from Proto-Germanic *swaitą (“sweat”). More at sweat.

Related phrases

swot up onswot vac

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