swink

verb /swɪŋk/

1. To labour, to work hard

   archaic, intransitive

   Honour, estate, and all this worldes good, / For which men swinck and sweat incessantly

2. To cause to toil or drudge; to tire or exhaust with labor.

   archaic, transitive

   And the swinked hedger at his supper sat.

Where it comes from

From Middle English swynken, from Old English swincan (“to labour, work”), from Proto-Germanic *swinkaną (“to swing, bend”). Cognate with Old Norse svinka (“to work”).

Adapted from the Wiktionary entry swink (CC BY-SA 4.0).

← swingleswith →

Another random word More words starting with S