Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various omnivorous, even-toed ungulates of the family Suidae, having a stout body with thick skin, a short neck, and a movable snout, especially the domesticated pig.
- noun A person regarded as contemptible or disgusting.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An ungulate non-ruminant quadruped, of the family Suidæ in a broad sense; any hog, pig, sow, or boar; in the plural, these animals collectively.
- noun A mean, degraded person; a hoggish individual.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) Any animal of the hog kind, especially one of the domestical species. Swine secrete a large amount of subcutaneous fat, which, when extracted, is known as
lard . The male is specifically calledboar , the female,sow , and the young,pig . Seehog . - noun (Bot.) knotgrass (
Polygonum aviculare ); -- so called because eaten by swine. - noun (Bot.) a kind of oat sometimes grown for swine.
- noun (Bot.) a species of cress of the genus Senebiera (
S. Coronopus ). - noun [Obs.] a dolt; a blockhead.
- noun (Bot.) the sow thistle.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of various
omnivorous , even-toedungulates of the familySuidae . - noun pejorative A
contemptible person (plural swines). - noun archaic Plural form of
sow .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun stout-bodied short-legged omnivorous animals
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Incidentally, the term swine flu which a lot of people use is a misnomer.
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Incidentally, the term swine flu which a lot of people use is a misnomer.
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The World Health Organization says it's dropping the term swine flu to refer to the virus officially now known as the H1N1 influenza.
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The term swine flu hurt the pork industry so much that they pushed for a name change and got it.
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The term swine-plague should not be used in speaking of outbreaks of hog-cholera, as it is now considered a form of hog-cholera involving especially the lungs.
Common Diseases of Farm Animals R. A. Craig
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Also, because the pork lobby has loudly objected to the term swine flu, all federal health officials are required to refer to it as pandemic H1N1 or 2009 H1N1.
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The government, under pressure from pork producers, urged the media to drop the term swine flu and instead refer to the virus by using the specific virus strain, H1N1.
WWMT.com : News 2009
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Although the term swine is usually applied only to the domesticated animal, it actually covers all members of the family Suidae.
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Try typing in "swine" into Google and Yahoo image searches, then do the same for "swine flu", and you'll see how Google treats the two searches very differently from each other, but Yahoo treats them nearly the same.
Break Google’s Monopoly On Your Data: Switch To Yahoo Search | Lifehacker Australia 2009
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U.S. officials say they may abandon the term swine flu, for fear it’s confusing people into thinking they could catch it from pork, which is flat-out wrong…
Prolagus commented on the word swine
Wouldn't you like to get away?
Bestowing the memory of good and evil
On the ones you left behind
The heartless swine
(Le pastie de la Bourgeoisie, by Belle and Sebastian)
August 19, 2008
ruzuzu commented on the word swine
Cf. kine.
June 1, 2011
rolig commented on the word swine
Cows are taller.
June 2, 2011
ruzuzu commented on the word swine
Yes... go on. You're doing great!
June 3, 2011
rolig commented on the word swine
And humans drink their milk, but not as a rule swine's milk. And while men are often compared to swine, comparisons to kine tend to be reserved for women, especially in British English (Am. English prefers canines as the object of comparison in this case).
June 3, 2011
ruzuzu commented on the word swine
Well done! You're a rare talent.
June 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word swine
Though we tend to associate swine with impossibility, "when pigs fly", cows tend to feature more prominently in this context in other cultures: "when cows fly", "at Easter of the horses and at the wedding of the cows", "when the cow coughs".
French also is quite fond of cows when it comes to expressions, e.g. "La vache !" (Dammit!); "vachement" as an adverbial intensifier, etc. An interesting discussion of this phenomenon is found here .
June 3, 2011
ruzuzu commented on the word swine
Why don't humans drink swine milk?
June 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word swine
Why don't humans drink swine milk?
Duh, delicious bacon!
June 3, 2011
reesetee commented on the word swine
Milk that tastes like bacon? Blecch.
June 4, 2011
rolig commented on the word swine
Wouldn't that be a little like carbonara sauce?
*goes to look up recipe*
June 5, 2011
reesetee commented on the word swine
Well, now that you put it that way....
June 5, 2011