swine

[swahyn] /swaɪn/
noun, plural swine.
1.
any stout, cloven-hoofed artiodactyl of the Old World family Suidae, having a thick hide sparsely covered with coarse hair, a disklike snout, and an often short, tasseled tail: now of worldwide distribution and hunted or raised for its meat and other products.
Compare hog, pig, wild boar.
2.
the domestic hog, Sus scrofa.
3.
a coarse, gross, or brutishly sensual person.
4.
a contemptible person.
Origin
before 900; Middle English; Old English swīn; cognate with German Schwein hog, Latin suīnus (adj.) porcine; akin to sow2
Related forms
swinelike, adjective
Examples from the web for swine
  • The swine flu pandemic highlights a decades-old problem: industrial animal farming poses serious public health risks.
  • The first doses of vaccine for the swine flu began arriving.
  • Vaccines being made to protect people from swine flu may not be so healthy for threatened species of sharks.
  • Vaccines already exist for swine and chicken coronaviruses.
  • Last summer everyone was in a panic about swine flu.
  • Viral diseases such as swine flu have spread quickly around the world by air.
  • Worries about the spread of swine flu are currently doing wonders for the market in pocket-sized antimicrobial handwash.
  • And it'd be a helluva lot more painful to the swine than losing property.
  • Then he realized where he'd seen that look before: the swine flu video.
  • Medical personnel shunned the swine flu vaccine in droves.
British Dictionary definitions for swine

swine

/swaɪn/
noun
1.
(pl) swines. a coarse or contemptible person
2.
(pl) swine another name for a pig
Derived Forms
swinelike, adjective
swinish, adjective
swinishly, adverb
swinishness, noun
Word Origin
Old English swīn; related to Old Norse svīn, Gothic swein, Latin suīnus relating to swine
Word Origin and History for swine
n.

Old English swin "pig, hog," from Proto-Germanic *swinan (cf. Old Saxon, Old Frisian Middle Low German, Old High German swin, Middle Dutch swijn, Dutch zwijn, German Schwein), neuter adjective (with suffix *-ino-) from PIE *su- (see sow (n.)). The native word, largely ousted by pig. Applied to persons from late 14c. Phrase pearls before swine (mid-14c.) is from Matt. vii:6; an early English formation of it was:

Ne ge ne wurpen eowre meregrotu toforan eo wrum swynon. [c.1000]
The Latin word was confused in French with marguerite "daisy" (the "pearl" of the field), and in Dutch the expression became "roses before swine."

swine in the Bible

(Heb. hazir), regarded as the most unclean and the most abhorred of all animals (Lev. 11:7; Isa. 65:4; 66:3, 17; Luke 15:15, 16). A herd of swine were drowned in the Sea of Galilee (Luke 8:32, 33). Spoken of figuratively in Matt. 7:6 (see Prov. 11:22). It is frequently mentioned as a wild animal, and is evidently the wild boar (Arab. khanzir), which is common among the marshes of the Jordan valley (Ps. 80:13).

Idioms and Phrases with swine

swine

see: cast pearls before swine