English edit

Etymology edit

a- +‎ sweep

Adverb edit

asweep (not comparable)

  1. Sweeping, making a sweeping motion.
    • 1842, John Wilson, chapter 3, in The Recreations of Christopher North[1], volume 1, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, page 175:
      the line that goes wavingly asweep round the base of the holy mountain, separating it from the common earth.
    • 1890, Banjo Paterson, “The Man from Snowy River”, in The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses[2], London: Macmillan, published 1896, page 49:
      Where fierce hot winds have set the pine and myall boughs asweep
    • 1926, Walter Noble Burns, chapter 20, in The Saga of Billy the Kid[3], Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing, page 294:
      When winds are asweep through the Pecos Valley, they whimper and moan in the barbed-wire fence like troubled ghosts.
    • 1962, Austin Clarke, chapter 4, in Twice Round the Black Church[4], London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, page 36:
      I thought of Mr. O’Neill, who was tall, pale and melancholy, with long white hair asweep, very like the picture of composers of my music book-covers.
    • 1993, Dewey Lambdin, The Gun Ketch[5], New York: Donald J. Fine, Book 1, Chapter 1, p. 11:
      [] low and gently rolling hills, some forested, some asweep with velvety swaths of rippling, growing grain.

Anagrams edit