swine

CEFRB2

/swaɪn/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A pig, especially one seen as dirty or unpleasant.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    A contemptible person (plural swine or swines).

Examples

  • His great oration was like pearls before swine.

  • It is like casting pearls before swine.

At a glance

Sits at B2 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. A police officer; a "pig".

  2. A pig (the animal).

  3. Something difficult or awkward; a pain.

More examples

In context

  • This is like casting pearls before swine.

  • That old car is a swine to manoeuvre.

  • The Zimmerman farm introduced swine to their husbandry.

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The organic farmer raised healthy blank on his farm for fresh meat.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English swyn, swin, from Old English swīn, from Proto-West Germanic *swīn, from Proto-Germanic *swīną, from an adjectival form of Proto-Indo-European *suH- (“pig”). Cognates Related to West Frisian swyn, Low German Swien, Dutch zwijn, German Schwein, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish svin, Faroese and Icelandic svín, and more distantly to Polish świnia, Russian свинья́ (svinʹjá), Latin sūinus, Latin sūs, Ancient Greek ὗς (hûs), Persian خوک (xuk).