Swept

How to spell swept

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce swept

What does swept mean?

1. verbPast tense of sweep: cleared a surface with a broom, or moved something in a smooth, broad motion.

Swept in a sentence

• She swept the kitchen floor before the guests arrived.

• The storm swept across the coast overnight and flooded the road.

Where does swept come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Swept is the past tense of the verb sweep, a word with deep native English roots. Sweep descends from the Old English verb swapan, which meant 'to sweep, to brush along, or to drive forcefully', and it is closely tied to the noun swipe and to the idea of a wide, sweeping motion. As Middle English took shape, the verb settled into the form swepen, and like a handful of other native verbs (keep and kept, sleep and slept, weep and wept) it formed its past tense by shortening the long vowel and adding a -t rather than a regular -ed. That pattern is exactly why the spelling drops the long 'ee' of sweep and ends in -ept; writing 'sweeped' feels natural but is wrong. The same Germanic family gives us swift and swoop, both carrying that sense of rapid, sweeping movement.

How the word is built

• sweep (to clear or move with a broad stroke)
• -t (irregular past-tense ending replacing the long vowel of sweep with a short one)