sweater
Pluralsweaters
Verbsweaters, sweatering, sweatered
Pluralsweaters
Formssweaters, sweatering, sweatered
- 1A knitted garment that covers the upper body, worn for warmth.
He layered a wool sweater over his shirt before heading out into the snow.
The store's fall collection features chunky cable-knit sweaters in earth tones.
Similarpullover, jumper, cardigan, jersey
Note
The everyday American word for any warm knitted top, with no athletic connection left. Jumper, pullover and jersey compete with it in other varieties of English, and cardigan names one particular kind. Its homely, seasonal feel shows in Yo La Tengo's song "Autumn Sweater" (1997), where the garment stands for comfort and intimacy rather than exercise.
- 2A knitted jersey or jacket, typically of heavy wool, that an athlete wears while warming up or cooling down from exercise.
The boxer shrugged off his sweater as he climbed into the ring.
Rowers pulled thick wool sweaters over their singlets as soon as they came off the water.
Similarsweatshirt
Note
The athletic garment shows the word's makeup most plainly: sweat plus -er, the ending that marks a doer or a cause. It belongs to the gym and the riverbank, pulled on before or after the effort rather than during it, and its nearest relative is the sweatshirt. The same build gives the word its people as well, from the perspirer to the exploiting middleman, which is why one spelling covers a jersey and a villain.
- 3To dress a person or animal in a sweater.
He stopped to sweater the toddler against the October wind.
Grandmother insisted on sweatering the twins before they could leave the house.
Note
A noun turned into a verb, and regular in every form: sweaters, sweatering, sweatered. It always takes an object, so you sweater a child or a dog against the cold rather than simply sweatering. Because the inflections follow the ordinary pattern, the only real choice is whether the playful coinage suits the register at all.
- 4One who sweats; a person who produces sweat.
As a profuse sweater, he schedules his long runs for the cool early morning.
Sports physicians remind heavy sweaters to replace lost electrolytes during long workouts.
- 5Someone or something that causes a person to sweat.
Everyone agreed the noon shift at the foundry was a sweater.
The trainer's hill drills are notorious sweaters among the rowing squad.
Note
The causative sense shades easily into the exploiting middleman. When Chesterton, in Charles Dickens (1906), sets "repentant sweaters" beside shame-stricken schoolmasters as witnesses to the cruelty of child-factories, the people who make others sweat are employers who work them hard. Applied to a task or a shift, the word names an ordeal. Applied to a person, it usually carries blame.
- 6A remedy that induces sweating; a diaphoretic.
The apothecary recommended a sweater of elderflower tea to break the patient's fever.
Herbal manuals of the period ranked ginger and yarrow preparations among the most dependable sweaters.
Similardiaphoretic, sudorific
Note
Medicine's version of whatever makes you sweat is a diaphoretic, an agent given to promote perspiration. Such remedies were formerly given for fevers and chills, on the belief that sweating helped expel the illness. Diaphoretic is the technical term and sweater the plain one. A writer using the plain word needs context, because a reader will otherwise take it to mean the garment.
- 7An exploitative middleman in the tailoring trade who subcontracted piecework to others.
The sweater collected the finished coats each Friday and paid his needlewomen a fraction of what the shop charged.
If the piecework system had not existed there never would have been any sweatees. The men who are sweaters, I am sorry to say, are men who formerly belonged to our union.
1894, New York (State) Bureau of Mediation and Arbitration, Annual ReportSimilarmiddleman, subcontractor
Note
The central figure of the "sweating system" of piecework, and a term to use historically. The New York State Bureau of Mediation and Arbitration's Annual Report of 1894 pairs him with the "sweatees" who did the work. It also laments that many sweaters had once belonged to the union, so the exploiter was often a former fellow worker.
Less common meanings
- 8A person who sweated coins, shaking them together so that small amounts of precious metal wore off for collection.
A practiced sweater could shake a hundred guineas for an hour and gather a pinch of gold dust.
Mint officials blamed sweaters and clippers alike for the lightness of the circulating coin.
Note
This sense names a fraud on the coinage rather than a sweat of the brow. Gold or silver coins were shaken together so that fine particles wore off and could be gathered. The sweater worked alongside the clipper, who simply trimmed the edges, and both were prosecuted for it. The word belongs to the age of precious-metal coin and now turns up only in histories of it.
- 9In Queen Anne's London, a street ruffian who amused himself by prodding passers-by with the point of his sword.
A sweater cornered the young clerk near the tavern and pricked at his calves until he danced.
The watch finally seized two sweaters who had terrorized Fleet Street for a month.
Note
One of the night gangs of Queen Anne's London, remembered alongside the Mohocks. William Lecky describes them forming a circle round a prisoner and pricking him with their swords until he sank exhausted. Here the victim, not the ruffian, did the sweating. The word is obsolete and belongs only to accounts of that period's street violence.
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Practice
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Origin
From Middle English 'swētere', equivalent to 'sweat' plus the suffix '-er'.