Swives

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Archaic term meaning to engage in sexual intercourse with someone, found mainly in older literature and texts
2. An old-fashioned verb for copulating with a person, found mainly in early modern English writing
3. Dated verb describing the act of having sexual relations with a partner, now largely obsolete in modern use

Etymology: "Swives" is the third-person singular present of "swive," an old verb meaning to have sexual intercourse, and its history runs through sweeping and turning rather than anything erotic. The Old English ancestor "swīfan" meant to move, sweep, wend or revolve, and it grew out of a Proto-Germanic root meaning to wipe or sweep. Its relatives include Old Norse "svīfa," meaning to drift or ramble, and Norwegian Nynorsk "sviva," meaning to rotate or wander. The same stock also gave English "swift" and "swivel." The verb moved from motion to the bedroom through a long, gradual narrowing of meaning, and the modern sense is the one that survives in dictionaries today. Along the way it shared its sound with other verbs, and in its later forms it came to be used primarily in that sexual sense.

Synonyms: copulate, couple