different between sunburnt vs swarthy

English

Alternative forms

• sunburned

Etymology

From Middle English sunne brente, equivalent to sun +? burnt.

Adjective

sunburnt (comparative more sunburnt, superlative most sunburnt)

1. (of human skin) Having a sunburn or dark tan; having been burned by the sun's rays.
   • c. 1611, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1,^[1]

     You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary,

     Come hither from the furrow and be merry:

   • 1726, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, London: Benjamin Motte, Volume 1, Part 2, Chapter 1, p. 171,^[2]

     […] I must beg leave to say for my self, that I am as fair as most of my Sex and Country, and very little sun-burnt by my Travels.

   • 1887, Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders, London: Macmillan, Volume 2, Chapter 12, p. 230,^[3]

     He looked and smelt like Autumn’s very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit-stains […]

   • 2000, Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, New York: Random House, Part 3, Chapter 1, p. 168,^[4]

     His face was sunburned bright red, and the skin of his ears was peeling.

2. (of plants and other objects) Dried by the sun's rays.
   • 1753, Arthur Murphy, The Gray’s-Inn Journal, No. 53, 20 October, 1753, London: P. Vaillant, 1756, Volume 2, p. 191,^[5]

     The barren Heath, and the Sun-burnt craggy Soil appear with all those Softenings to the Eye, which Distance throws upon a Landscape;

   • 1842, Charles Dickens, American Notes, London: Chapman and Hall, Volume 1, Chapter 7, p. 267,^[6]

     the well-remembered dusty road and sun-burnt fields

   • 1847, William Hickling Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru, New York: Harper, Volume 2, Books 3, Chapter 10, p. 73,^[7]

     The […] fortress of the Incas stood on a lofty eminence, the steep sides of which […] were cut into terraces, defended by strong walls of stone and sunburnt brick.

   • 1901, Rudyard Kipling, Kim, London: Macmillan, 1902, Chapter 13, p. 329,^[8]

     out on to the bare hillside’s sunburnt grass

3. (of places or objects) Subject to the strong heat and/or light of the sun.
   • 1790, Samuel Jackson Pratt, The New Cosmetic: or The Triumph of Beauty, London: for the author, Act I, p. 3,^[9]

     So my dear Charles, you are at length […] arrived in our little sun-burnt island?

   • 1856, John Ruskin, Modern Painters, London: Smith, Elder, Volume 4, Part 5, Chapter 16, p. 251,^[10]

     […] when distances are obscured by mist […] the foreground assumes all its loveliest hues, the grass and foliage revive into their perfect green, and every sunburnt rock glows into an agate.

   • 1978, Jan Morris, Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Part 3, Chapter 26, p. 536,^[11]

     Most of it [the island of Mauritius] was high […] so that gusts of fresh winds often blew exuberantly off the sea, and the British could build their villas far above the sunburnt coast.

4. Resembling a sunburn in color.

   The van was painted a sunburnt brown.

Translations

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /?sw??ði/

Adjective

swarthy (comparative swarthier, superlative swarthiest)

1. Tawny, dusky, dark.
2. Dark-skinned.
3. Darker-skinned than white, but lighter-skinned than tawny.
   • 1751, Benjamin Franklin, "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind"

     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

   • 2016 "Luther the Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career, Second Edition" page 11

     Such was the religion that a young, swarthy man of medium height took with him as he trudged off to the University of Erfurt in May 1501.

4. (nonstandard) Evil, malicious.
5. (nonstandard) Weathered, rough.

Synonyms

• (dark-skinned): black, dusky, sable, sooty

Translations

Noun

swarthy (plural swarthies)

1. A swarthy person.
   • 1900, The Whole Prose Romances of François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, page 70

     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

   • 1962, The Skipper volume 22, page 21

     Then one of the swarthies popped a couple of shovels of coal into the small fo'c's'le stove — for it was cold that July night Down Under — and everyone began to talk.

   • 1980, The secret of Sam Marlow: The Further Adventures of the Man with Bogart's Face, page 12

     Hobby Lobby made a slight motion with his left hand and the swarthies froze in the desert.

   • 1997, The Chariton Review, Volume 23, Issue 1, page 71

     The swarthies just stood waiting for whatever was in the air. I wanted to get up and walk away. But I didn't even budge.

   • 2010, Sympathy for the Devil, page 366

     Real controversial stuff, sure, but you know what, he was actually in the dead center of polite opinion when it came to the Negroes and the swarthies and money-grubbing kikes and all those other lovely stereotypes.

   • 2014, Dead Men Don't Eat Lunch, page 52

     The swarthies didn't bother to threaten us this time; instead, they mocked us with catcalls and whistles, as we squeezed past them in abject humiliation.

   • 2015, Everything is Happening: Journey into a Painting, page 24

     A school friend of mine, Gavin, one of the swarthies, organised one May afternoon a tea party at his parents' house in Cheyne Walk.