swipes

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   dated British slang: weak, watery, or inferior beer

   The tired laborers complained that the cheap swipes tasted mostly of water.

2. 2
   noun

   by extension, something dismissed as weak, dull, or inferior

   The critic rejected the pamphlets as literary swipes with no serious ideas.

A plural noun recorded in late eighteenth-century British slang for weak or inferior beer, probably related to an obsolete swipe meaning 'to gulp down' and ultimately to sweep. Figurative use compares insipid material with watered beer.

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