1609. Beaumont and Fletcher, Scornful Lady, iii. 1. My lady speaks with no such swabbers.
1634. Ford, Perkin Warbeck, i. 1. More fit to be a swabber to the Flemish, After a drunken surfeit.
1678. Cotton, Virgil Travestie (1770), 33. This being said, our lusty swabber Groan'd like a Woman in her Labour.
1725. Bailey, Erasmus, 42. I am his swabber . . . his brawl, his errand boy.
1748. Smollett, Roderick Random. xxiv. He swore accordingly at the lieutenant, and called him . . . swab and lubbard.
1886. Besant, World Went Well, etc., xxix. Luke was a grass comber and land swab.
3. (old).—'The ace of hearts, knave of clubs, ace and deuce of trumps at whist' (B. E. and Grose): the holder was entitled to a portion of the stakes. [These four cards were only incident to betting at whist.]
c. 1700. Swift [quoted by Strutt, Sports and Pastimes (1801, etc.), 436]. The clergymen used to play at whist and swobbers; playing now and then a sober game at whist for pastime, it might be pardoned; but he could not digest those wicked swobbers.
1754. Fielding, Jonathan Wild, i. iv. As whisk and swabbers was the game then in the chief vogue, they were oblig'd to look for a fourth person, in order to make up their parties.
1817. Scott, Rob Roy, i. 225. The society of half a dozen of clowns to play at whisk and swabbers would give her more pleasure than if Ariosto himself were to awake from the dead.
Swack, subs. (Christ's Hospital).—Deception.
Hence to swack
up = to deceive; to take in
(q.v.). Also swack-up = a
falsehood.
Swad, subs. (old).—1. A reproach:
generic; spec. (1) a rustic
or clodhopper; and (2) a disbanded
soldier (Grose), now-a-days
a militiaman. Also swadder,
swadkin, swadgill, and
swaddy.
1534. Holinshed, Chron. of Ireland. Three drunken swads that kept the castell thought that this showt was nought else but a dreame.
1588. Greene, Perimedes. Let countrey swaines and silly swads be still; To court, yoong wag, and wanton there thy fill.
1592. Lyly, Midas, iv. 3. I'll warrant, that was devised by some country swad.
1593. Peele, Honour of the Garter. There came a pilfring swad And would have prayd upon this ornament.
1606. Return from Parnassus. But hang them, swadds, the basest corner in my thoughts is too gallant a roome to lodge them in.
1622. Taylor, Motto. I have opinion, and have ever had, That when I see a stagg'ring drunken swad, Then that a man worse then an asse I see.
1633. Jonson, Tale of a Tub, ii. 1. Now I remember me, There was one busie fellow was their leader, A blunt squat swad.
1638. Braithwaite, Survey of History. A squeazed swad without either meanes, manners, or mannor.
1640. Two Lancashire Lovers, 22. How should the reasonable soule (unlesse all his prime faculties were drowned and drenched in the lees of sense) affect such a swad?
1656. Blount, Glossog., 627. Swad, in the North, is a pescod shell; thence used for an empty shallow-headed fellow.
d.1701. Dryden, Counter Scuffle [Misc., iii. 340]. Wer't not for us, thou swad, quoth he, Where wouldst thou fog to get a fee?
2. (common).—A lump, bunch, crowd, mass: also swod.
