Sweat

verb. (once literary; now colloquial).—1.  To work hard; to drudge; to put in LICKS (q.v.); also TO SWEAT ONE’S GUTS OUT. Cf. modern (public school) SWAT (or SWOT) = fagging, hard study, especially mathematics, whence SWOT also = a mathematician; and as verb, to fag, or study hard (see quot. 1864).

  1551.  ROBYNSON, More’s Utopia, ii. 11. Watching, waiting, and SWEATING; hoping shortly to obtain it.

  1597.  SHAKESPEARE, Richard III., v. 3. 255.

  1612.  CHAPMAN, The Widow’s Tears, v. 1.

  1622.  FLETCHER, The Spanish Curate, iii. 3.

  d. 1667.  A. COWLEY, The Tree of Knowledge, 4.

  1864.  HOTTEN, The Slang Dictionary, s.v. SWOT. This word originated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, in the broad Scotch pronunciation of Dr. Wallace, one of the Professors, of the word ‘SWEAT.’

  1881.  PASCOE, ed. Everyday Life in Our Public Schools, 225. So much for work, or ‘SWOT,’ as the Harrovian in common with other boys somewhat inelegantly terms the more important part of the instruction he receives at school.

  1900.  KIPLING, Stalky & Co., 135. Fags bully each other horrid; but the upper forms are supposed to be SWOTTIN’ for exams.

  2.  (common).—To suffer; to pay the penalty. Also (trans.) to beat; to pay out.

  1610.  BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, The Coxcomb, v. 1.

  3.  (old).—See quots.

  1712.  STEELE, The Spectator, No. 332, 21 March. These SWEATERS … seem to me to have at present but a rude kind of discipline among them.

  1823.  GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd ed.), s.v. SWEATING. A diversion practised by the bloods of the last century, who styled themselves Mohocks: these gentlemen lay in wait to surprise some person late in the night, when surrounding him, they with their swords pricked him in the posteriors, which obliged him to be constantly turning round: this they continued till they thought him sufficiently SWEATED.

  1847.  J. E. WALSH, Sketches of Ireland Sixty Years Ago, 13. Others were known by the sobriquet of ‘SWEATERS and Pinkindindies.’ It was their practice to cut off a small portion of the scabbards of the swords which every one then wore, and prick, or ‘pink’ the persons with whom they quarrelled with the naked points, which were sufficiently protruded to inflict considerable pain, but not sufficient to cause death.

  4.  (common).—To extort, lose, or squander money freely; TO FLEECE (q.v.); TO BLEED (q.v.). see quot. 1784. Also TO SWEAT ONE’S PURSE = to cause one to spend everything.

  1847.  J. E. WALSH, Sketches of Ireland Sixty Years Ago, 14. They determined to amuse themselves by ‘SWEATING’ him, i.e., making him give up all his fire-arms.

  5.  (common).—To work for (or employ labour at) starvation wages; to submit to extortion (or to extort). Hence SWEATER = an employer of underpaid labour: usually a middleman between the actual employer and employed; a grinding taskmaster. Whence SWEATING-SYSTEM, SWEATER, SWEATED, etc.

  1850.  C. KINGSLEY, Cheap Clothes and Nasty. At the honourable shops, the master deals directly with his workmen; while at the dishonourable ones,… the work … is let out to contractors or middle-men—‘SWEATERS,’ as their victims significantly call them—who, in their turn, let it out again, sometimes to the workmen, sometimes to fresh middle-men; so that out of the price paid for labour on each article, not only the workmen, but the SWEATER, and perhaps the SWEATER’S SWEATER, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, have to draw their profit.

  1851–61.  H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, I. 64. I have many a time heard both husband and wife—one couple especially who were ‘SWEATING’ for a gorgeous clothes’ emporium—say that they had not time to be clean.

  1883.  Pall Mall Gazette, 29 Oct. SWEATERS’ hacks turning out frockcoats.

  1886.  Echo, 1 Dec. Recently a trade journal published a list of SWEATING firms in the clothing trade, each of which probably has grounds of action.

  1887.  BEATRICE POTTER, The Dock Life of East London, in Nineteenth Century, xxii. Oct., 489. They declared that they were being ‘SWEATED’—that the hunger for work induced men to accept starvation rates.

  1889.  SIDNEY WEBB, The Limitation of the Hours of Labour, in The Contemporary Review, lvi. Dec., 880. It is possible that several of the minor industries of the East End are absolutely dependent upon the fact that a low type of ‘SWEATED’ and overworked labour is employed at starvation wages.

  6.  (old).—To pawn.

  c. 1816.  Old Song, ‘The Night before Larry Was Stretched’ [FARMER, Musa Pedestris (1896), 79].

  PHRASES.—IN A SWEAT = (1) in a hurry, and (2) in a state of terror, impatient; TO SWEAT COINS = to remove part of the metal from coins (chiefly gold) by friction or acids, yet in such a manner that the depreciation is imperceptible.

  1785.  GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. SWEATING. A mode of diminishing the gold coin, practised chiefly by the Jews, who corrode it with aqua regia.

  1796.  WOLCOT, Peter Pindar, 109.

  1875.  W. S. JEVONS, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, 115. No one now actually refuses any gold money in retail business, so that the SWEATER, if he exists at all, has all the opportunities he can desire.

  1879.  J. RUTHERFORD (‘Thor Fredur’), Sketches from Shady Places, p. 193. By far the most scientific form of smashing is that which is called ‘SWEATING’—the modern equivalent for the ruder art of ‘clipping,’ so fully described in Macaulay’s History. Here the galvanic battery is brought into requisition, the metal being dissolved equally from all the surfaces of the coin operated upon, and that, too, without impairing the sharpness of ‘image or superscription.’ Sufficient metal for the SWEATER’S purpose being removed, the coin is polished afresh with a wire-brush and restored to circulation.