swot
/swɒt
/British informal
verb (swots, swotting, swotted) [no object]
1Study assiduously: kids swotting for GCSEs...
- Just last week the wonderfully named teenager Seb Clover sailed solo across the Atlantic at a time when most of his peers are swotting for exams.
- Serves me right for reading the Economist when I should have been swotting for my year 2 exams.
- I suppose I should be swotting madly to be prepared for the big meeting with the supervisor tomorrow, however.
1.1 (swot up on) Study (a subject) intensively, especially in preparation for something: swot up on the country’s driving laws before you go [with object]: (swot something up) I’ve always been interested in old furniture and I’ve swotted it up a bit...
- The new site offers visitors not just information on the school, but a chance to swot up on subjects as well.
- Hobbs, who left school at 16 without a qualification to his name, defied his detractors by swotting up on what makes a successful health club.
- She likes Charles Dickens' novels - Nicholas Nickleby is her favourite - and after choosing her specialist subject she then had a fortnight to swot up on the writer.
noun derogatory
A person who studies very hard.That speech confirms what many people feel and fear about politicians: that they were the most despised classmates at school - the swot, the precocious prat, the political trainspotter....
- The unloved school swots of the 20th century have blossomed into the alpha group of the 21st.
- Even in Shakespeare's day, school was for girlie swots rather than naughty boys.
Derivatives
swotty
- It used to be perceived as a really swotty thing to enjoy reading but authors such as her have made books more accessible and made reading enjoyable.
- When he read the book on the recommendation of his daughter Eleanor, he was especially drawn to Harry's swotty classmate Hermione, the character Rowling has said is most closely based on herself.
- But, at the same time, I wouldn't deliberately go looking for an institution that churned out swotty kids who took their A-levels at 12.
Origin
Mid 19th century: dialect variant of sweat.
A variation of sweat (Old English) that started life as army slang. Swot was first ‘studying, school, or college work’, and referred especially to mathematics. This led to its use to describe someone who studies hard or excessively.