swarthy

Definition

Tawny, dusky, dark.

Etymology

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

Example Sentences

• "Their swarthy Hosts wou'd darken all our Plains, / Doubling the native Horror of the War, / And making Death more grim."
• "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"
• "Yossarian went along in Milo Minderbinder's speeding M & M staff car to police headquarters to meet a swarthy, untidy police commissioner with a narrow black mustache and unbuttoned tunic who was fiddling with a stout woman with warts and two chins when they entered his office and who greeted Milo with warm surprise and bowed and scraped in obscene servility as though Milo were some elegant marquis."