subs. (old).—1. ‘The sorriest sea-men put to wash and clean the ship’ (B. E. and GROSE: in this sense good Shakespearean English); hence (2) a term of contempt. Also SWAB.
1602. SHAKESPEARE, Twelfth Night, i. 5. 216. Mar. Will you hoist sail, sir?… Vio. No, good SWABBER; I am to hull here a little longer. Ibid. (1609), ii. 2. 48. The master, the SWABBER, the boatswain, and I.
1609. BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, The Scornful Lady, iii. 1. My lady speaks with no such SWABBERS.
1634. FORD, Perkin Warbeck, i. 1.
| More fit to be a SWABBER to the Flemish | |
| After a drunken surfeit. |
1678. COTTON, Scarronides, or, Virgil Travestie (1770), 33.
| This being said, our lusty SWABBER | |
| Groan’d like a Woman in her Labour. |
1725. N. BAILEY, trans. The Colloquies of Erasmus, 42. I am his SWABBER … his brawl, his errand boy.
1748. SMOLLETT, Roderick Random, xxiv. He swore accordingly at the lieutenant, and called him … SWAB and lubbard.
1886. BESANT, The World Went Very Well Then, xxix. Luke was a grass comber and land SWAB.
3. (old).—‘The ace of hearts, knave of clubs, ace and deuce of trumps at whist’ (B. E. and GROSE): the holder was entitled to a portion of the stakes. [These four cards were only incident to betting at whist.]
c. 1700. Swift, An Essay on the Fates of Clergymen, in Miscellanies, III. 167. The Clergyman used to play at Whisk and SWOBBERS; that as to playing now and then a sober Game at Whisk for Pastime, it might be pardoned, but he could not digest those wicked SWOBBERS.
1754. FIELDING, Jonathan Wild, I. iv. As whisk and SWABBERS was the game then in the chief vogue, they were oblig’d to look for a fourth person, in order to make up their parties.
1817. SCOTT, Rob Roy, I. 225. The society of half a dozen of clowns to play at whisk and SWABBERS would give her more pleasure than if Ariosto himself were to awake from the dead.
