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swingle
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Swingle

Swingle \Swin"gle\, v. i. [Freq. of swing.]

  1. To dangle; to wave hanging. [Obs.]
    --Johnson.

  2. To swing for pleasure. [Obs. or Prov. Eng.]

Swingle

Swingle \Swin"gle\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Swingled; p. pr. & vb. n. Swingling.] [See Swingel.]

  1. To clean, as flax, by beating it with a swingle, so as to separate the coarse parts and the woody substance from it; to scutch.

  2. To beat off the tops of without pulling up the roots; -- said of weeds. [Prov. Eng.]
    --Forby.

Swingle

Swingle \Swin"gle\, n. A wooden instrument like a large knife, about two feet long, with one thin edge, used for beating and cleaning flax; a scutcher; -- called also swingling knife, swingling staff, and swingling wand.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
swingle

"instrument for beating flax," early 14c., from Middle Dutch swinghel "swingle for flax," cognate with Old English swingell "beating, stick to beat, whip, scourge, rod," from swingan "to beat, strike, whip" (see swing (v.)) + instrumental suffix -le. Or perhaps directly from the Old English word, with narrowing of sense.

Wiktionary
swingle

Etymology 1 n. An implement used to separate the fibres of flax by beating them; a scutch vb. 1 to beat or flog, especially for extracting the fibres from flax stalks; to scutch 2 To beat off the tops of (weeds) without pulling up the roots. Etymology 2

vb. 1 To dangle; to wave hanging. 2 (context obsolete UK dialect English) To swing for pleasure.

Wikipedia
Swingle

Swingle may refer to:

  • Swingle, California, an unincorporated community in Yolo County, California
  • Walter Tennyson Swingle (1871–1952), U.S. agricultural botanist.
  • Ward Swingle (1927–2015), musician, singer, arranger, founder of the Swingle Singers
  • Paul Swingle (1966– ), former Major League Baseball pitcher
  • The Swingle Singers, vocal octet founded by Ward Swingle. aka Swingle II, The Swingles, The New Swingle Singers

Usage examples of "swingle".

The man called Joe Swingle cocked a hip and mewled without sympathy at the big man.

Joe Swingle clamped his arm around his skinny chest and tried to keep warm.

He stood on his toes, on top of a crate full of granular fertilizer, and watched as Swingle and two more of his men burst out of the warehouse across the courtyard.

Joe Swingle shook his hands in the air, then rubbed his short haircut.

Zenoviev, Irwin, and Hovitch were just common slugs Swingle had picked up in his travels.

Kirk was pushing him back slightly, moving forward enough that if Swingle fired that rifle, Jimmy would be the only one to get hit.

McCoy left back here with Swingle while the two of them launched the ship.

Joe Swingle howled in shock and landed on his head with one shoulder against the port side clinker plating.

Klingon commander doing business with Swingle, and not the whole Klingon Empire behind this, but that was enough.

President had Louise Swingle place another condolence call to Congressman Lodge.

The president, dressed in the Brooks Brothers suit that Louise Swingle had provided, did not return the gesture.

A little packet of swingle tow dipped in tar, the kind incendiaries use.

Berio also made some settings of Beatles material which were sung by Les Swingle Singers, the French choral group whose work varied from popular songs to the most difficult of experimental music.

Before that, a Victorian doll went and, with the man-trap, some sets of handmade cottage-industry buttons, a swingle and a couple of early nineteenth-century handmade smocks.

That was the day on which Dame Beatrice interviewed the schoolboys and established that they had been responsible for rigging up the scarecrows with the smocks they had found, had added the swingle, ignored the card of buttons and had seen neither the man-trap nor the doll.