subs. (old).—1.  A reproach: generic; spec. (1) a rustic or clodhopper; and (2) a disbanded soldier (GROSE), now-a-days a militiaman. Also SWADDER, SWADKIN, SWADGILL, and SWADDY.

1

  1534.  HOLINSHED, Chronicle of Ireland. Three drunken SWADS that kept the castell thought that this showt was nought else but a dreame.

2

  1588.  GREENE, Perimedes.

        Let countrey swaines and silly SWADS be still;
To court, yoong wag, and wanton there thy fill.

3

  1592.  J. LYLY, Midas, iv. 3. I’ll warrant, that was devised by some country SWAD.

4

  1593.  PEELE, The Honour of the Honourable Order of the Garter.

                    There came a pilfering SWAD,
And would have prey’d upon this ornament.

5

  1606.  The Return from Parnassus, i. 2 [DODSLEY, Old Plays, 1874, ix. 109]. But hang them, SWADS, the basest corner in my thoughts is too gallant a room to lodge them in.

6

  1630.  TAYLOR (‘The Water Poet’), Motto.

        I haue opinion, and haue euer had,
That when I see a stagg’ring drunken SWAD:
Then that a man worse then an Asse, I see.

7

  1633.  JONSON, A Tale of a Tub, ii. 1.

        Now I remember me,
There was one busie Fellow was their Leader;
A blunt squat SWAD.

8

  1638.  BRATHWAITE, A Survey of History, 167. A squeazed SWAD without either Meanes, Manners, or Mannor. Ibid. (1640), The Two Lancashire Lovers, iv. 22. How should the reasonable Soule (unlesse all his prime faculties were drowned and drenched in the lees of sense) affect such a SWAD?

9

  1656.  BLOUNT, Glossographia, 627. SWAD, in the North, is a pescod shell; thence used for an empty shallow-headed fellow.

10

  d. 1701.  DRYDEN, The Counter Scuffle [Miscellany Poems, iii. 340].

        Were’t not for us, thou SWAD (quoth he)
Where wouldst thou Fog to get a Fee?

11

  2.  (common).—A lump, bunch, crowd, mass: also SWOD.

12

  1834.  C. A. DAVIS, Letters of Jack Downing, Major, 35. There was a SWOD of fine folks … and the house was well nigh upon chuck full.

13

  1840.  HALIBURTON (‘Sam Slick’), The Clockmaker, 3 S. vi. How is a colonist able to pay for this almighty SWAD of everlasting plunder, seein’ he has no gold or silver?

14

  1869.  The Overland Monthly, iii. 131, ‘South-Western Slang.’ A Texan never has a great quantity of any thing, but he has ‘scads’ of it, or ‘oodles,’ or ‘dead oodles,’ or ‘scadoodles,’ or ‘SWADS.’

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