aswoon
English
Etymology
a- + swoon
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /əˈswuːn/
- Rhymes: -uːn
Adverb
aswoon (not comparable)
- In a swoon.
- 1951, Geoffrey Chaucer; Nevill Coghill, transl., The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin Books, published 1977, page 369:
- 'This is your daughter whom you so commended / As wife for me; the other on my oath / Shall be my heir as I have long intended, / They are the children of your body, both.' [...] / On hearing this Griselda fell aswoon / In piteous joy, but made recovery / And called her children to her.
- 2003 Summer, Nicole Louise Reid, “Honeydew”, in The Southern Review, volume 39, number 3, page 596:
- Anyhow, he came right over, and I was near aswoon but breathed real deep and gripped hold of the cash tray and managed not to tumble to the floor-even if the quarters did a little dance in their bin with me tugging to stay up.
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References
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for aswoon in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913)