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Swarf vs Snarf - What's the difference?

swarf | snarf |

As verbs the difference between swarf and snarf

is that swarf is (scotland) to grow languid; to faint while snarf is (slang) to eat or consume greedily.

As a noun swarf

is the waste chips or shavings from metalworking or a saw cutting wood.

swarf

English

Noun

(-)
  • the waste chips or shavings from metalworking or a saw cutting wood
  • * 1979 , Cormac McCarthy, Suttree , Random House, p.95:
    • Harrogate looked at the ground. A black swarf packed with small parts in a greasy mosaic.
  • the grit worn away by use of a grindstone or whetstone, being particles of the material being cut and of the cutting stone itself

    • Usage notes

    Infrequently used after the 19th century; primarily in technical settings.

    Related terms

    * swerve

    See also

    * grind * grinder * grindstone * grit * hone * metalwork * smith * whet * whetstone

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (Scotland) To grow languid; to faint.
  • * Sir Walter Scott
    • to swarf for very hunger

    References

    snarf

    English

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (slang) To eat or consume greedily.
    • He snarfed a whole bag of chips in a couple of minutes!
  • *1999 : Marya Hornbacker, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia , page 239
    • Freed from the usual inhibitions, we get home and I snarf down pasta salad right out of the Tupperware container
  • *2000 : Nancy Woodruff, Someone Else's Child , page 40
    • "I'm not going to sit there while you two watch me snarf a whole pie by myself."
  • *2003 : Allen D. Berrien, Powerboat Care and Repair: How to Keep Your Outboard, Sterndrive, Or Gas-Inboard Boat Alive and Well , page 41
    • The old 40-horse models used to snarf up more fuel than today's 90-horse models.
  • (slang) To take something by dubious means, but without the connotations of stealing; to take something without regard to etiquette.
    • I snarfed a bunch of freebies from the vendor's booth when he wasn't looking.
  • *1995 : Tom Shanley, Don Anderson, ISA System Architecture , page 296
    • Either write-through or write-back policy caches may snarf the data that the bus master is writing to memory.
  • *1996 : Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, Julie Sussman, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs , page 399
    • ... in addition, the embedding enables the designer to snarf features from the underlying language
  • *2001 : Brad A. Myers, Choon Hong Peck, Jeffrey Nicols, Dave Kong, and Robert Miller, Interacting at a Distance Using Semantic Snarfing , in Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Ubiquitous Computing, pages 305-314.
    • Other future applications of the semantic snarfing idea might include classrooms, where students might snarf interesting pieces of content from the instructor's presentation;
  • (slang) To expel fluid or food through the mouth or nostrils accidentally, usually while attempting to stifle laughter with one's mouth full.
    • It was so funny, I snarfed my milk onto my keyboard.
  • (transitive, slang, computing) To slurp (computing slang sense); to load in entirety; to copy as a whole.
    • I snarfed the whole database into my program.