swarthy

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Dark-skinned; black.

   Their swarthy Hosts wou'd darken all our Plains, / Doubling the native Horror of the War, / And making Death more grim.

2. 2
   adj

   Darker-skinned than white, but lighter-skinned than tawny; tan.

   The Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People.

3. 3
   adj

   Weathered, rough.

   Mason: "Okay, how do I look, really?" Betty: "…'Swarthy.'" Mason: "Well, is that good?" Betty: "Depends if you like 'swarthy.'" Mason: "Do you like 'swarthy'?" Betty: "Not particularly.".

4. 4
   noun

   A swarthy person.

   Finally I saw all our Italian women and my mother, torn in pieces, cut up, massacred by the monsters who contended for them ; the captives, my companions, the Moors who had taken us, the soldiers, the sailors, the blacks, the whites, the swarthies, the mulattoes, and lastly, my captain himself, were all slain.

Alteration of obsolete swarty, from swart + -y, from Old English sweart (“black”).

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