different between swarf vs snarf

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /sw??f/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /sw??f/
• Rhymes: -??(?)f, -??f

Etymology 1

From Middle English *swarf, *swerf, from Old English ?eswearf, ?esweorf (“iron filings; rust”) and/or Old Norse svarf (“metallic dust”), both from Proto-Germanic *swarb? (“that which is rubbed off; shavings”), from Proto-Germanic *swerban? (“to mop, wipe; to rub off”); see further at swerve. The word is cognate to Old English sweorfan (“to rub, scour; to file”).

Noun

swarf (countable and uncountable, plural swarfs)

1. (uncountable) The waste chips or shavings from an abrasive activity, such as metalworking, a saw cutting wood, or the use of a grindstone or whetstone. [from mid 16th c.]
2. (countable) A particular waste chip or shaving.

Synonyms

• (chips or shavings): turnings

Related terms

• swerve

Translations

Verb

swarf (third-person singular simple present swarfs, present participle swarfing, simple past and past participle swarfed)

1. (transitive) To grind down.

Etymology 2

From Middle English swarven, swerven (“to go; to deviate, turn aside; to stagger, be unsteady; to swerve”), from Old English sweorfan (“to wipe; to polish; to rub, scour; to file”), from Proto-Germanic *swerban? (“to mop, wipe; to rub off”). The word is cognate to Middle Dutch swerven (“to rove; to stray”) (whence Dutch zwerven (“to roam”)), Low German swarven (“to rove; to stray; to riot”), Old Norse svarfa (“to sweep; to be agitated, upset”), Norwegian svarva (“to agitate”), sverva (“to whirl”). See swerve.

Verb

swarf (third-person singular simple present swarfs, present participle swarfing, simple past and past participle swarfed)

1. (intransitive, Scotland, obsolete) To grow languid; to faint.

Noun

swarf (plural swarfs)

1. (obsolete) A faint or swoon.

References

Further reading

• swarf on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• FWSAR, Warfs

English

Etymology

Blend of snort +? scarf?

Pronunciation

Verb

snarf (third-person singular simple present snarfs, present participle snarfing, simple past and past participle snarfed)

1. (transitive, slang) To eat or consume greedily.

   He snarfed a whole bag of chips in a couple of minutes!

   • 1999: Marya Hornbacker, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, page 239

     Freed from the usual inhibitions, we get home and I snarf down pasta salad right out of the Tupperware container […]

   • 2000: Nancy Woodruff, Someone Else's Child, page 40

     "I'm not going to sit there while you two watch me snarf a whole pie by myself."

   • 2003: Allen D. Berrien, Powerboat Care and Repair: How to Keep Your Outboard, Sterndrive, Or Gas-Inboard Boat Alive and Well, page 41

     The old 40-horse models used to snarf up more fuel than today's 90-horse models.

2. (transitive, slang) To take something by dubious means, but without the connotations of stealing; to take something without regard to etiquette.

   I snarfed a bunch of freebies from the vendor's booth when he wasn't looking.

   • 1995: Tom Shanley, Don Anderson, ISA System Architecture, page 296

     Either write-through or write-back policy caches may snarf the data that the bus master is writing to memory.

   • 1996: Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, Julie Sussman, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, page 399

     ...in addition, the embedding enables the designer to snarf features from the underlying language […]

   • 2001: Brad A. Myers, Choon Hong Peck, Jeffrey Nicols, Dave Kong, and Robert Miller, Interacting at a Distance Using Semantic Snarfing, in Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Ubiquitous Computing, pages 305-314.

     Other future applications of the semantic snarfing idea might include classrooms, where students might snarf interesting pieces of content from the instructor's presentation; […]

3. (transitive, intransitive, slang) To expel (fluid or food) through the mouth or nostrils accidentally, usually while attempting to stifle laughter with one's mouth full.

   It was so funny, I snarfed my milk onto my keyboard.

4. (transitive, slang, computing) To slurp (computing slang sense); to load in entirety; to copy as a whole.

   I snarfed the whole database into my program.

Anagrams

• FRANs