Swab vs Broom - What's the difference?
swab | broom |
(medicine) a small piece of soft, absorbent material, such as gauze, used to clean wounds, apply medicine, or take samples of body fluids. Often attached to a stick or wire to aid access.
A sample taken with a swab (1).
A piece of material used for cleaning or sampling other items like musical instruments or guns.
A mop, especially on a ship.
(slang) A sailor; a swabby.
To use a swab on something, or clean something with a swab.
* , chapter=6
, title= (label) A domestic utensil with fibers bound together at the end of a long handle, used for sweeping.
(countable, curling) An implement with which players sweep the ice to make a stone travel further and curl less; a sweeper.
Any of several yellow-flowered shrubs of the family Fabaceae, in the genera , with long, thin branches and small or few leaves.
* 1610 , , by (William Shakespeare), act 4 scene 1:
(intransitive) To sweep.
* 1855 September 29, , "Model Officials", in Household Words: A Weekly Journal , Bradbury and Evens (1856),
* , Our Street'', in ''Christmas Books: Mrs. Perkins's Ball, Our Street, Dr. Birch'', Chapman & Hall (1857),
* Opal Stanley Whiteley, The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart , Atlantic Monthly Press (1920),
* 1997 , Will Hobbs, Far North (HarperCollins, ISBN 0380725363), page 100:
As nouns the difference between swab and broom
is that swab is (medicine) a small piece of soft, absorbent material, such as gauze, used to clean wounds, apply medicine, or take samples of body fluids often attached to a stick or wire to aid access while broom is (label) a domestic utensil with fibers bound together at the end of a long handle, used for sweeping.As verbs the difference between swab and broom
is that swab is to use a swab on something, or clean something with a swab while broom is (intransitive) to sweep or broom can be (nautical).swab
English
Noun
(en noun)Synonyms
* (sailor) swabbyVerb
(swabb)Mr. Pratt's Patients, passage=He had one hand on the bounce bottle—and he'd never let go of that since he got back to the table—but he had a handkerchief in the other and was swabbing his deadlights with it.}}
broom
English
(wikipedia broom)Etymology 1
(etyl), from (etyl) ‘edge’. Related to (l), (l).Noun
- and thy broom groves,
- Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
- Being lass-lorn
Derived terms
* a new broom sweeps clean * broom wagon * broomstick * brooming * pushbroom / push broom / push-broom * whiskbroomVerb
(en verb)page 206:
- “[…] Sidi, I was busy in the exercise of my functions, occupied in brooming the front of the stables, when who should come but Hhamed Ould Denéï on horseback, at full gallop, as if he were going to break his neck. […]”
''Our Streetpage 8:
- It was but this morning at eight, when poor Molly, was brooming the steps, and the baker paying her by no means unmerited compliments, that my landlady came whirling out of the ground-floor front, and sent the poor girl whimpering into the kitchen.
pages 58–59:
- After that I did take the broom from its place, and I gave the floor a good brooming'. I ' broomed the boards up and down and cross-ways. There was not a speck of dirt on them left.
- We broomed the dirt floor clean with spruce branches, brought our gear inside, and moved in.