Swat

How to spell swat

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce swat

What does swat mean?

1. verbTo hit something, especially an insect, with a quick flat blow.
2. nounA sharp, flat blow delivered quickly.

Swat in a sentence

• verb

  She rolled up the newspaper to swat the fly buzzing around the kitchen.

• noun

  A single swat from the rolled magazine silenced the wasp.

• verb

  He reached over to swat the mosquito that had landed on his arm.

• noun

  He gave the dusty cushion a hard swat to knock the crumbs loose.

Where does swat come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word swat is an American English coinage that surfaced in the early 1800s as a dialect variant of 'squat', which once carried the older sense of 'to strike or hit with a flat object'. Both forms trace back to the same general family of blunt, percussive words in English that imitate the sound and force of a heavy slap. Over time 'squat' narrowed to mean crouching low, while 'swat' kept the striking sense and became the standard word for delivering a quick, flat blow, especially to a fly or insect. It is closely related in feel to 'swap' (originally 'to strike a bargain by slapping hands') and to the dialect word 'swot', though that British term for hard study is unrelated in meaning. The spelling stays short and phonetic, so the main trap is simply confusing it with the similar-sounding British 'swot'.

How the word is built

• swat (single root, a variant of 'squat'/'swap' meaning a sharp slap)