Swived

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Archaic term meaning to have sexual intercourse with someone, used in older English literature
2. Describing the act of copulating with a partner, a crude and old-fashioned expression found in early modern writing
3. An obsolete vulgar verb for engaging in sexual intercourse, as used in Elizabethan and Jacobean texts

Etymology: The verb "swive" is an unexpected relative of "swift" and "swivel." Its Old English ancestor, "swīfan," meant "to move, sweep, wend, revolve," and it grew out of a Proto-Germanic root meaning "to wipe" or "to sweep." Related Germanic forms had drifted into senses like "to waver," "to drift," and "to rove," so the word began as a term of motion, with no sexual sense at all. Its later meaning, which narrowed to sexual intercourse, developed in Middle English, and the word's core sense of rapid, sweeping movement still shows in its relatives. "Swived" is simply the past tense and past participle of "swive," so it carries the same history as the base verb.