{"id":6300,"date":"2011-11-25T11:22:54","date_gmt":"2011-11-25T11:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=6300"},"modified":"2011-11-25T11:22:54","modified_gmt":"2011-11-25T11:22:54","slug":"swot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=6300","title":{"rendered":"Swot!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In British English the word <strong>swot<\/strong> (\/sw\u0252t\/) means to study or work hard &#8211; you might swot for your exams if you&#8217;re a swot (someone who works\/studies hard). You might also swot <strong>up on<\/strong> something. Calling someone a swot, or a little swot, can be a kind of insult, perhaps with undertones of envy or even guilt &#8211; you might think that you should really be swotting as well.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/oed.com\/view\/Entry\/196060?rskey=rg686K&#038;result=1&#038;isAdvanced=false#eid\">OED<\/a> swot, or swat, is a dialect variant of sweat and originated at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Surrey, where William Wallace, a Scottish professor of mathematics, apparently once said,  &#8216;It mades one swot&#8217; (= sweat), and it first appeared in print in 1850.<\/p>\n<p>Other words with the same or similar meanings include to mug up on, to bone up on, and to cram for. Cramming isn&#8217;t quite the same as swotting though, as it usually involves trying to fit as much knowledge into your head as you can in a relatively short in preparation for an exam or test. Swotting can mean this, and can also mean doing all the work \/ study you&#8217;re given, and perhaps more than that &#8211; i.e. making more effort than strictly necessary &#8211; something that some people prefer not to be accused of.<\/p>\n<p>Are there words in American English or other varieties of English with similar connotations to swot?<\/p>\n<p>In French the word for a swot is <em>bachoteur(-euse)<\/em>, and to swot (for an exam) is <em>potasser (un examen)<\/em> &#8211; do these have any of the connotations of swot?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In British English the word swot (\/sw\u0252t\/) means to study or work hard &#8211; you might swot for your exams if you&#8217;re a swot (someone who works\/studies hard). You might also swot up on something. Calling someone a swot, or a little swot, can be a kind of insult, perhaps with undertones of envy or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}