Swoop is a hilarious word.

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by CheskiChips, Oct 14, 2009.

  1. CheskiChips Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,538
    Where does it come from? Why does no one where I live use it? Is it a rural word?

    I heard someone today say:
    "And then I swooped it up"
    and he meant
    "And then I picked it up"

    Later he used the word like this -
    "He swooped it"
    and he meant
    "He stole it"

    and no joke he then again used the word (when referring to his dog attacking his other dog)-
    "And then he swooped him"
    and he meant
    "He jumped on him and attacked him"
     
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  3. Enmos Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    43,184
    Sounds like an expletive to me.

    On the other hand...
    One of the words definitions is 'to come down upon something in a sudden, swift attack', so his usage in the third example is correct.
    He may have used another definition, 'to take, lift, scoop up, or remove with or as with one sweeping motion', in the first two examples.
    Definitions here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/swoop
     
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  5. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    It's a genuine Anglo-Saxon word, swapan, that has a cognate in German schweifen. There were some colossal phonetic shifts between Anglo-Saxon and Modern English.

    "Swoop" and "sweep" are simply variants of the same word. Sometimes two versions of a word survive, usually because they came from two different regions in England where they had evolved slightly different meanings and the dialects did not have the same pronunciation. No one dialect was "standard English" in those days because French had been the official language for a couple of centuries, so our vocabulary is a hodgepodge of words from all over England.

    The word originally described the motion of something large like an army, a herd of animals, a storm or a flood, as it came through an area and pushed everything out of its way. It was logical to apply the word to the use of a much smaller object, such as a broom, to deliberately "sweep" dirt and detritus off of a surface. "Swoop," on the other hand, retains its earlier large-scale meaning.
     
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2009
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  7. mugaliens Registered Member

    Messages:
    110
    Swoop
     

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