Adjective: swart
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | swarter |
| Superlative | swartest |
Perifrastic
Sample Sentences
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1400s: Thomas Occleve, Hymns to the Virgin
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Men schalle then sone se / Att mydday hytt shalle swarte be
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A nation strange, with visage swart [1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:]
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Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious, [c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:]
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Of shades , and wanton winds , and gushing brooks ,
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On whose fresh lap the swart - star sparely looks [1637 (date written; published 1638), John Milton, “Lycidas”, in Poems of Mr. John Milton, […], London: […] Ruth Raworth for Humphrey Mosely, […], published 1646, →OCLC:]
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I'll choose a gaoler, whose swart monstrous face
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Shall be a hell to look upon […] [1819, John Keats, Otho the Great, act II, scene I, verses 91-92:]
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The merry soldiers footing it with the swart savage maids [1836, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Old Ticonderoga:]
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The keeping eunuchs were at back, solemn in stately rows, bespeared and bescimitared, the Danish, Irish, and German of their countenances lost in the daub which made them swart. [1905, Samuel Major Gardenhire, The Silence of Mrs. Harrold - Page 277:]
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[…] unpierced ever
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With glitter of sun rays
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Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
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Swartest night stretched over wretched men there. [1925, Ezra Pound, Canto I:]
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Suddenly the swart figure of Time stood up before the gods, with both hands dripping with blood and a red sword dangling idly from his fingers, and said: “Sardathrion is gone! I have overthrown it!” [1906, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], Time and the Gods, London: William Heineman, →OCLC, page 4:]
Adjectives inflected like swart
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 swart, from Old English sweart, from Proto-West Germanic *swart, from Proto-Germanic *swartaz, from Proto-Indo-European *swerd-. Doublet of Schwarz.
Verbs referencing "swart"
German Adjectives
schwarz, Swedish Adjectives
svart, Gothic Adjectives
𐍃𐍅𐌰𐍂𐍄𐍃.