Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To trade one thing for another.
  • intransitive verb To exchange (one thing) for another.
  • noun An exchange of one thing for another.
  • noun A contract in which two parties agree to exchange periodic interest payments, especially when one payment is at a fixed rate and the other varies according to the performance of a reference rate, such as the prime rate.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To exchange; barter.
  • To barter; exchange.
  • noun An act of swapping; a barter; an exchange.
  • noun A blow; a stroke.
  • noun A swoop.
  • noun A fall.
  • At a snatch; hastily; with hasty violence.
  • To strike; beat.
  • To chop: used with reference to cutting wheat in a peculiar way.
  • To strike; aim a blow.
  • To move swiftly; rush.
  • To fall down.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Obs. or Prov. Eng. A blow; a stroke.
  • noun colloq. An exchange; a barter.
  • transitive verb Obs. or Prov. Eng. To strike; -- with off.
  • transitive verb colloq. To exchange (usually two things of the same kind); to swop.
  • adverb Prov. Eng. Hastily.
  • intransitive verb To fall or descend; to rush hastily or violently.
  • intransitive verb To beat the air, or ply the wings, with a sweeping motion or noise; to flap.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A roughly equal exchange of two comparable things.
  • noun finance A financial derivative in which two parties agree to exchange one stream of cashflow against another stream.
  • verb obsolete To strike, hit.
  • verb To exchange or give (something) in an exchange (for something else).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb exchange or give (something) in exchange for
  • verb move (a piece of a program) into memory, in computer science
  • noun an equal exchange

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English swappen, to strike, strike the hands together in closing a bargain.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Uncertain, probably from imitative origin.

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