asweat

English

WOTD – 8 December 2020

Etymology

From a- (prefix meaning ‘at; in; on’, used to show a state, condition, or manner) +‎ sweat.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /əˈswɛt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛt

Adjective

asweat (not comparable)

1. (dated) In a sweat; covered or soaked with sweat or some liquid resembling sweat; sweating.

   Synonyms: sudoriferous, sudorific, sweaty

   • 1834, John A[braham] Heraud, “Book the Third”, in The Judgement of the Flood, London: James Fraser […], →OCLC, section II, page 60, lines 333–335:

     [...] Death was my red son, / Who, like an harvest man asweat with toil, / Perspires all gore, dissolved in bloody dews— [...]

   • 1866, “Book XI”, in John Stuart Blackie, transl., Homer and the Iliad, volumes II (The Iliad in English Verse, Books I.–XII.), Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, →OCLC, page 344:

     [T]he dam, beholding nigh, can bring her offspring dear / No needful help, for her own limbs are bound by trembling fear, / And with a sudden dread she starts, and flies with speed increased, / Through bush and wild wood all asweat, before that strong-jawed beast; [...]

   • 1867, Augusta Webster, “Anno Domini 33. III. Pilate.”, in A Woman Sold and Other Poems, London, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, pages 62–63:

     [T]he sheepish herds, / That flock around each new teacher, all asweat / With running and jostling for the nearest place, / To stare and wonder what he means and cry / "Oh, the rare teacher!" till the next one comes, [...]

   • 1883, chapter 15, in Edwin Arnold, transl., Pearls of the Faith: Or Islam’s Rosary: Being the Ninety-nine Beautiful Names of Allah (Asmâ-el-Husnâ) […], 2nd edition, London: Trübner & Co., […], →OCLC, page 47:

     [W]hen they had given / The cool wet jar, asweat with diamond-drops / Of sparkling life, that way-worn Arab laved / The muzzle of his beast, and filled her mouth; [...]

   • 1910 January 12, Ameen Rihani, “The Kaaba of Solitude”, in The Book of Khalid, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, published October 1911, →OCLC, book the second (In the Temple), page 187:

     Beneath them my swarthy and hardy peasants are plodding up the hill asweat and athirst.

   • 1925, Robinson Jeffers, “The Tower beyond Tragedy”, in Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems (The Modern Library of the World’s Best Books; 118), New York, N.Y.: The Modern Library, published 1935, →OCLC, page 38:

     I threw a cloak over him for a net and struck, struck, struck, / Blindly, in the steam of the bath; he bellowed, netted, / And bubbled in the water; / All the stone vault asweat with steam bellowed; / And I undid the net and the beast was dead, and the broad vessel / Stank with his blood.

   • 1986, Richard [Gustave] Stern, “Language and Turmoil”, in The Position of the Body, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, →ISBN, page 92:

     Spurred by clever organizers—a few of them are still being hunted by the FBI—a couple of hundred students, asweat with revolutionary and sexual excitement, occupied—one of the key verbs of modern political "turmoil"—the Administration Building.

   • 2007, Carol Birch, chapter 22, in Scapegallows, London: Virago Press, →ISBN, pages 116–117:

     It made me remember the old ballad where she wakes up in bed with her lover, and the sheets are damp and she says ‘wake up, wake up, the sheets are all asweat’, but when she looks it’s not sweat but blood in the bed.

Translations

in a sweat; covered or soaked with sweat or some liquid resembling sweat — see sweaty

Anagrams

• awaste