Forswinking

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Wearing out or exhausting a person through hard, prolonged labour until they are weary and spent
2. Tiring someone out by overwork, leaving them worn down and depleted from toil
3. Causing exhaustion through strenuous effort, especially by driving a worker past the limits of endurance

Etymology: "Swink" is an old English word meaning hard labour or toil, and "forswink" takes that root and adds the intensive prefix "for-", which in Middle English could mean "excessively" or "utterly." To forswink someone was to wear them out completely, overworking them until they had no strength left. The prefix does most of the work here. The same "for-" appears in "forswear" and "forspeak," where it intensifies or reverses the sense of the base verb, and in this case it turns ordinary toil into exhaustion pushed beyond what a body can bear. Because "forswinking" is the form that describes the act of doing this, the word carries the sense of driving someone past their limits rather than simply making them work.

Synonyms: exhaust, weary, tire out