Swincan

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To work laboriously and endure hardship or exhaustion through strenuous effort, as Old English speakers used the verb
2. To struggle through toilsome labor, bearing weariness and suffering in the process of doing hard work
3. Describing the act of laboring hard and suffering fatigue or affliction while carrying out demanding tasks

Etymology: Old English "swincan" meant "to labour, toil, suffer hardship", and it is the ancestor of modern "swink", a word now mostly found in poetry. Its history is plain: it is a Germanic verb inherited into Old English, related to Old Norse "svinna" ("to toil"), and it shares a root with German "schwinden" in the older sense of "to become weak". Its sense is closer to suffering through effort than to the bustling activity we now associate with work. The verb survived in English for centuries, but by the late Middle Ages it had largely faded from everyday speech. Its old past tense, "swonk", appears in some dialect and literary records, which is a reminder that strong verbs often lose their forms before they lose their meanings. Modern English kept it alive mainly through the noun "swink", meaning hard labour, and through Chaucer and later poets who revived the older vocabulary.