any stout, cloven-hoofed artiodactyl of the Old World family Suidae, having a thick hide sparsely covered with coarse hair, a disklike snout, and an often short, tasseled tail: now of worldwide distribution and hunted or raised for its meat and other products.Compare hog, pig1, wild boar.
the domestic hog, Sus scrofa.
a coarse, gross, or brutishly sensual person.
a contemptible person.
Origin of swine
before 900;Middle English;Old Englishswīn; cognate with GermanSchwein hog, Latinsuīnus (adj.) porcine; akin to sow2
Old English swin "pig, hog," from Proto-Germanic *swinan (cf. Old Saxon, Old Frisian Middle Low German, Old High German swin, Middle Dutch swijn, Dutch zwijn, German Schwein), neuter adjective (with suffix *-ino-) from PIE *su- (see sow (n.)). The native word, largely ousted by pig. Applied to persons from late 14c. Phrase pearls before swine (mid-14c.) is from Matt. vii:6; an early English formation of it was:
Ne ge ne wurpen eowre meregrotu toforan eo wrum swynon. [c.1000]
The Latin word was confused in French with marguerite "daisy" (the "pearl" of the field), and in Dutch the expression became "roses before swine."
