swarthy
Part of speech: adj
noun
Morphological type: derivation
Etymology: Alteration of obsolete swarty, from swart + -y, from Old English sweart (“black”).
Base: swart
Affixes: -y
Inflected forms:
form: swarthier
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: swarthiest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: swarthies
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Tawny, dusky, dark.
pos: adj
gloss: Dark-skinned; black.
pos: adj
tags: derogatory
examples: Their swarthy Hosts wou'd darken all our Plains, / Doubling the native Horror of the War, / And making Death more grim.
gloss: Darker-skinned than white, but lighter-skinned than tawny; tan.
pos: adj
examples: the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People
Yossarian went along in Milo Minderbinder's speeding M & M staff car to police headquarters to meet a swarthy, untidy police commissioner with a narrow black mustache and unbuttoned tunic who was fiddling with a stout woman with warts and two chins when they entered his office and who greeted Milo with warm surprise and bowed and scraped in obscene servility as though Milo were some elegant marquis.
Such was the religion that a young, swarthy man of medium height took with him as he trudged off to the University of Erfurt in May 1501.
gloss: A dark grey color.
pos: adj
gloss: Evil, malicious.
pos: adj
tags: nonstandard
gloss: Weathered, rough.
pos: adj
tags: nonstandard
examples: Mason: "Okay, how do I look, really?"
Betty: "…'Swarthy.'"
Mason: "Well, is that good?"
Betty: "Depends if you like 'swarthy.'"
Mason: "Do you like 'swarthy'?"
Betty: "Not particularly."
gloss: A swarthy person.
pos: noun
examples: Finally I saw all our Italian women and my mother, torn in pieces, cut up, massacred by the monsters who contended for them ; the captives, my companions, the Moors who had taken us, the soldiers, the sailors, the blacks, the whites, the swarthies, the mulattoes, and lastly, my captain himself, were all slain
Then one of the swarthies popped a couple of shovels of coal into the small fo'c's'le stove — for it was cold that July night Down Under — and everyone began to talk.
Hobby Lobby made a slight motion with his left hand and the swarthies froze in the desert.
The swarthies just stood waiting for whatever was in the air. I wanted to get up and walk away. But I didn't even budge.
Real controversial stuff, sure, but you know what, he was actually in the dead center of polite opinion when it came to the Negroes and the swarthies and money-grubbing kikes and all those other lovely stereotypes.
The swarthies didn't bother to threaten us this time; instead, they mocked us with catcalls and whistles, as we squeezed past them in abject humiliation.
A school friend of mine, Gavin, one of the swarthies, organised one May afternoon a tea party at his parents' house in Cheyne Walk.
Antonyms: fair
pale
Derived words: swarthily
swarthiness
Translations: