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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

swine.

A pig, an animal of family Suidae, especially in agricultural contexts.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/swaɪn/
  1. A pig, an animal of family Suidae, especially in agricultural contexts.

    The Zimmermann farm raises swine for their meat.
  2. Pig, pork, the meat of pigs.

    The Book says don't eat no swine.
  3. A "pig", variously A contemptible person, particularly one imbued with negative piglike characteristics, a greedy, lazy, dirty, and/or lecherous person.

    derogatory · figuratively
    Don't cast pearls before swine.
  4. A "pig", variously A police officer.

    derogatory · figuratively · slang · uncommon
    Keep your mouths shut. Don't tell the swine anything.
  5. A "pig", variously A pain, any thing or task that is difficult, annoying, or unpleasant.

    derogatory · figuratively · slang
    That old car is a swine to manoeuvre.
  6. Synonym of wolffish.

    obsolete · rare
Where this word comes from

From Middle English swyn, swin; from Old English swīn; from Proto-West Germanic *swīn; from Proto-Germanic *swīną; from an adjectival form of Proto-Indo-European *suH- (“pig”). * In modern use, especially as a term of abuse, frequently a calque of German Schwein or its derivatives. * In reference to wolffish, a clipping of swinefish. Cognates Related to West Frisian swyn, Low German Swien, Dutch zwijn, German Schwein, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish svin, Faroese and Icelandic svín, and more distantly to Polish świnia, Russian свинья́ (svinʹjá), Latin sūinus, Latin sūs, Ancient Greek ὗς (hûs), Persian خوک (xuk).

noun/swaɪn/
  1. plural of sow

    archaic · form-of · plural
Where this word comes from

From Middle English swyn, swin; from Old English swīn; from Proto-West Germanic *swīn; from Proto-Germanic *swīną; from an adjectival form of Proto-Indo-European *suH- (“pig”). * In modern use, especially as a term of abuse, frequently a calque of German Schwein or its derivatives. * In reference to wolffish, a clipping of swinefish. Cognates Related to West Frisian swyn, Low German Swien, Dutch zwijn, German Schwein, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish svin, Faroese and Icelandic svín, and more distantly to Polish świnia, Russian свинья́ (svinʹjá), Latin sūinus, Latin sūs, Ancient Greek ὗς (hûs), Persian خوک (xuk).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.