Swat - swot

The homophones swat and swot (both are pronounced to rhyme with 'not', 'got' and 'hot', IPA: /swɒt/) are often confused. (OED lists three nouns, an adjective and two verbs spelled swat, and only one noun and its cognate verb swot. AWE here is only concerned with the commonest of these.) They should not be confused - although each is recorded in OED as a variant form of the other. Both may be nouns or verbs. Only two meanings are likely to be found in current English. AWE recommends the following distinction, as it appears that each is better supported by the different etymologies.

• Swat is currently mostly used for 'a quick or violent blow' (or 'to deliver a quick or violent blow'), and is now mostly applied to the action of trying to crush (or succeeding in crushing) a fly or other insect, or figurative meanings based on it. (Someone may try to 'swat aside' the arguments of an opponent by treating them as insignificant or trivial.) A fly-swatter is an instrument often used for this purpose: usually a small flat surface attached to the end of a light and whippy stick, originally sometimes only a horse's tail or similar assemblage of hairs. (A horse, like other animals, naturally swats flies with its own tail.)

Etymological note: OED gives the root of swat as a dialect variant (in US and northern British) of squat n.¹, a northern dialect word meaning 'a heavy fall or bump; a severe or violent jar or jolt'. Douglas Harper's [Etymological Dictionary] suggests that it is "possibly an alteration of Middle English swap "to strike, smite".

• • Swat is a district now in Pakistan. It, along with the river and valley after which it is named, is found in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, and is part of the North West Frontier area. Predominantly Pashto (or 'Pushtu', 'pakhtun' or 'Pathan')-speaking, the people of Swat are often linked to or in alliance with their co-linguists in Afghanistan. The man who united the area, a notable mullah (religious leader) and ruler called Akhund Abdul Ghaffur (1793-1878), has been the subject of two poems in English: The Akond of Swat by Edward Lear (1812-1888) (on line at [[1]]) and A threnody, better known by its first line The Ahkoond of Swat, by George T. Lanigan (1846–1886) (on line at [[2]]), in which Swat is used to mean an inhabitant of [the district of] Swat in a jocular pastiche of Robert Burns' patriotic song "Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled":

Swats wha hae wi’ Ahkoond bled,

Swats whom he hath often led ...

• • • In law enforcement contexts Swat (sometimes S.W.A.T.) is an acronym for 'Special Weapons And Tactics', a name for teams of police officers equipped and trained to deal with situations more dangerous than normal and involving heavily armed criminals such as terrorists, hostage-takers and armed gangs.
• 'To swot' means 'to work hard' and 'a swot' is 'a person who works hard'. It is most often heard in a school context, where it is a pejorative term for the sort of pupil despised by other pupils for 'always having her (or his) head in a book', and thus not sharing in the less academic socialization of contemporaries - albeit sometimes with a tinge of admiration, envy and fear. 'Cramming' is a similar term.
  • The acronym SWOT, much used in Business and Management studies, refers to an analysis of a business or other institution. or the field in which it operates, by examination of its Strengths, Weaknesses, and the Opportunities and Threats it faces

Etymological note: swot is a dialect variant (mostly in Scots) of sweat. OED notes that "According to a contributor to [N. & Q.] 1st Ser. I. 369/2, the term originated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, in the use on one occasion of the expression ‘It makes one swot’ (= sweat) by the Scottish professor of mathematics, [William Wallace]."