swinker
English edit
Etymology edit
From Middle English swinkere, equivalent to swink + -er.
Pronunciation edit
- Rhymes: -ɪŋkə(ɹ)
Noun edit
swinker (plural swinkers)
- (archaic or dialectal) A toiler; a labourer.
- 1845, Thomas Ignatius M. Forster, Richard Gough, Epistolarium:
- Ye are twin swinkers in this nether field / One to prolong, the other to expand, / My landmark and my clock; but both must yield, / To the destroying angel's flaming wand, […]
- 1891, Harper's magazine, volume 83, page 786:
- Tosspots and swinkers were they then; tosspots and swinkers are they still.
- 2010, Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries:
- […] whether they were quizzed by "those idle gallants who haunt taverns, gay and handsome," or hobnobbed with "travellers and tinkers, sweaters and swinkers," the alehouse was assuredly no place for nuns.
Related terms edit
References edit
- “swinker”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.