Adjective: swack
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | swacker |
| Superlative | swackest |
Perifrastic
Sample Sentences
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Matthew advanced to the foot of the stairs and whistled. The signal had been expected, for presently he was joined by a swack youth of about eighteen years, who carried a couple of long salmon-spears. [1881, Charles Gibbon, For Lack of Gold, page 307:]
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A swack, healthy lass, with plump bust, arms, and legs (the last then evident), laughing lips, eyes over which the dark hair strayed—a guileless face, full of light and love. [1897, George A. Mackay, Where the Heather Grows, page 161:]
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it came the turn of a brave young childe with a red head and the swackest legs you ever saw, […] and as soon as he began the drill you saw he'd carry off the prize. [1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 37:]
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He made a run for shelter, and he was a swack enough lad them days for all his weight of years. [1949, William Chambers, Robert Chambers, Chambers's Journal, page 707:]
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He was a swack billy-boy, with the same high color as the landlord, and the same tight spaniel curls. [1953, Edward Ballard Garside, The Man from Brazil, page 162:]
Adjectives inflected like swack
sallow,
smooth,
slight,
sleigh,
sordid,
somber,
shweet,
shrill,
shrewd,
yellow,
yaller,
hard knock,
DRY,
Greek,
cut short,
unquiet,
unclean,
indiscreet,
chipper,
straicht, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From Middle English swac (“weak”), possibly borrowed via Scots swack, ultimately from Old English *swæc (found in derivative swæcehēow (“weakmindedness, nonsense”)), from Proto-West Germanic *swak (“weak”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian swäk, West Frisian swak, Dutch zwak, German Low German swack, German schwach, Norwegian Bokmål svak. See: Dutch Adjectives '
zwak', German Adjectives '
schwach'.