swipe
A quick grab, bat, or other motion with the hand or pawA quick grab, bat, or other motion with the hand or paw; a sweep.
Recorded US: Dvortygirl, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Meaning
8 senses(countable)A strong blow given with a sweeping motion, as with a bat or club.
a sweeping stroke or blow
(countable, informal)A rough guess; an estimate or swag.
Take a swipe at the answer, even if you're not sure.
(countable, informal)An attack, insult or critical remark.
The politician took a swipe at his opponents.
More meanings 5
(countable)A quick grab, bat, or other motion with the hand or paw; a sweep.
(countable)An act of interacting with a touch screen by drawing the finger rapidly across it.
(countable)An act of passing a swipecard through a card reader.
(uncountable)Poor, weak beer or other inferior alcoholic beverage; rotgut.
(countable)An instance of swiping, a kind of ellipsis. See swiping.
Origin
From earlier swip (with a short vowel), from Middle English swippen, swype (“to move violeFrom earlier swip (with a short vowel), from Middle English swippen, swype (“to move violently”), from Old English sweopian, swipian, swippan (“to scourge, strike, beat, lash”), from Proto-West Germanic *swippjan, *swipōn, *swipēn, from Proto-Germanic *swipōną, *swipjaną, *swipāną (“to move”), from Proto-Indo-European *sweyb- (“to bend, sway, swing, sweep, swerve, turn”). Cognate with German schwippen (“sway back and forth”), Danish svippe (“to smack; crack a whip”), Icelandic svipa (“riding crop, whip”). Related to sweep, swoop.
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Forms
plural: swipesSynonyms
1 synonymsWord family
3 related wordsLessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Countable and uncountable nouns — Because it can be uncountable
See also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.