slang. [Dialectal variant of SWEAT sb.
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 Scotch professor of mathematics, William Wallace.]
1. Work or study at school or college; in early use spec. mathematics. Hence gen. labor, toil.
1850. N. & Q., 1st Ser. I. 352/2. I have often heard military men talk of swot, meaning thereby mathematics; and persons eminent in that science are termed ‘good swots.’
1899. Crockett, Kit Kennedy, 307. Mary is a good girl, but I own it is no end of a swot to have to see her home from night-school.
1905. H. A. Vachell, The Hill, iii. 51. Our object is … to get through the ‘swat’ with as little squandering of valuable time as possible.
2. One who studies hard.
1850. [see sense 1].
1866. Routledge’s Every Boy’s Ann., 220. ‘Oh, you swat!’ met us at every turn … and yet the real truth was, that neither Jack nor myself did ‘swat.’
1899. ‘Martello Tower’ [Capt. Norman], At School & Sea, 40. Sometimes a knot of us … would persuade a good-natured swot to construe the forthcoming lesson to us.
