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swab
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
swab
I.noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Earlier this month traces of Salmonella typhimurium were found in swabs taken from the hen house.
▪ Have each student dip a cotton swab in purple grape juice and rub it over the paper.
▪ He covered my newest wound with a swab of alcohol and a lozenge of gauze.
▪ He remembers the glass jars filled with cotton swabs, tongue depressors, latex gloves.
▪ It is later learned he might also be getting an alcohol swab as well.
▪ Rectal swabs were cultured for chlamydia.
II.verb
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ After a Pap smear is done, the doctor simply swabs vinegar on the cervix and shines the blue-white light on it.
▪ As they leaned against a red brick wall, a portly prison system official swabbed at the sweat trickling into his collar.
▪ At Twentieth and Blake he saw a man swabbing a garbage truck.
▪ He studied her face as she cleaned the skin of the boy's right shoulder and swabbed a patch with alcohol.
▪ Isaac swabbed perspiration from above his haunted eyes with a rag he kept handy for cleaning the windshield.
▪ She sits in a soft curve at her easel, gently swabbing away three centuries from a grumpy London sky.
▪ There was no time for emotion as the blood was swabbed away and she concentrated on the badly gashed cheekbone.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Swab

Swab \Swab\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Swabbed; p. pr. & vb. n. Swabbing.] [See Swabber, n.] To clean with a mop or swab; to wipe when very wet, as after washing; as, to swab the desk of a ship. [Spelt also swob.]

Swab

Swab \Swab\, n. [Written also swob.]

  1. A kind of mop for cleaning floors, the desks of vessels, etc., esp. one made of rope-yarns or threads.

  2. A bit of sponge, cloth, or the like, fastened to a handle, for cleansing the mouth of a sick person, applying medicaments to deep-seated parts, etc.

  3. (Naut.) An epaulet. [Sailor's Slang]
    --Marryat.

  4. A cod, or pod, as of beans or pease. [Obs.]
    --Bailey.

  5. A sponge, or other suitable substance, attached to a long rod or handle, for cleaning the bore of a firearm.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
swab

1650s, "mop made of rope or yarn," from swabber (c.1600) "mop for cleaning a ship's deck," from Dutch zwabber, akin to West Frisian swabber "mop," from Proto-Germanic *swabb-, perhaps of imitative origin, denoting back-and-forth motion, especially in liquid.\n

\nNon-nautical meaning "anything used for mopping up" is from 1787; as "cloth or sponge on a handle to cleanse the mouth, etc.," from 1854. Slang meaning "a sailor" first attested 1798, short for swabber "member of a ship's crew assigned to swab decks" (1590s), which by c.1600 was being used in a broader sense of "one who behaves like a low-ranking sailor, one fit only to use a swab."

swab

1719, possibly a back-formation from swabber (see swab (n.)). Related: Swabbed; swabbing. Related: Swabification "mopping" (1833).

Wiktionary
swab

n. 1 (context medicine English) a small piece of soft, absorbent material, such as gauze, used to clean wounds, apply medicine, or take samples of body fluids. Often attached to a stick or wire to aid access. 2 A sample taken with a swab (1). 3 A piece of material used for cleaning or sampling other items like musical instruments or guns. 4 A mop, especially on a ship. 5 (context slang English) A sailor; a swabby. vb. (context transitive English) To use a swab on something, or clean something with a swab.

WordNet
swab
  1. n. implement consisting of a small piece of cotton that is used to apply medication or cleanse a wound or obtain a specimen of a secretion

  2. cleaning implement consisting of absorbent material fastened to a handle; for cleaning floors [syn: swob, mop]

  3. v. wash with a swab or a mop; "swab the ship's decks" [syn: swob]

  4. apply (usually a liquid) to a surface; "dab the wall with paint" [syn: dab, swob]

  5. [also: swabbing, swabbed]

Wikipedia
Swab

Swab may refer to:

  • Cotton swab, comprising a small wad of cotton on the end of a short rod
  • A nautical term for a yarn mop
    • By extension, a low-ranking sailor

Usage examples of "swab".

His arm already had been swabbed with iodine, sewn up and bandaged and in a sling and he was thanking his luck that his wound was relatively superficial.

Miles peeled back the biotainer wrap from his left wrist, and gritted his teeth as a biocide swab stung and the needle poked.

Roche had brought, poured some on a cloth, and swabbed the bubo gently with it.

A little research showed it that DNA testing for purposes of identification was usually done with buccal swabs, just wiping a few cells off the inside of the cheek, noninvasive and less personal than a blood or sperm sample.

You take the buccal swab and swirl it around in a test tube containing a solution that turns acid in the presence of even a microgram of DNA, then add a drop of Phenol Red.

The matter in which Carido gave a buccal swab is still an active and open investigation.

Less than human, mused Boba Fett as he swabbed down the bars that his most recent captive had been held behind.

FIRST VOICE Now, in her iceberg-white, holily laundered crinoline nightgown, under virtuous polar sheets, in her spruced and scoured dust-defying bedroom in trig and trim Bay View, a house for paying guests, at the top of the town, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard widow, twice, of Mr Ogmore, linoleum, retired, and Mr Pritchard, failed bookmaker, who maddened by besoming, swabbing and scrubbing, the voice of the vacuum-cleaner and the fume of polish, ironically swallowed disinfectant, fidgets in her rinsed sleep, wakes in a dream, and nudges in the ribs dead Mr Ogmore, dead Mr Pritchard, ghostly on either side.

Kraft has entered a long, intercalary dark age that lasts until he finds himself swabbing both arms with brown, lathery disinfectant in preparation for surgery.

Scarpetta gets out a presumptive blood kit and swabs areas of the wall where she saw the luminol react, working the cotton tip into the porous concrete where blood might lurk, even after washing.

He was just preparing to leave when Thornier came back upstairs with a load of buckets, mops, and swabs.

Each is about the size of a quarter and oval-shaped, and she swabs one of them, then drips isopropyl alcohol, then phenolphthalein, then hydrogen peroxide on the swab and it turns bright pink.

He said he knew a company that manufactured a putrescine detector, which doctors could use in place of swabs and cultures to diagnose vaginitis or, I suppose, a job at the skipjack cannery.

Then the two of us made frantic attempts to swab away the escaped rumenal contents with cotton wool and antiseptic, but much of it had run away beyond our reach.

Scott, he worked steadily, attaching clamps, clipping, removing tissue, swabbing, stitching, making occasional noises in his throat but otherwise not talking.