Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
"SWEEPS" is a plural of: sweep. |
Date "SWEEPS" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1321. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Mining | A. The dust of the workshops of jewelers, goldsmiths, silversmiths, and assayers and refiners of gold and silver. Also called sweeping. b. Brushwood arms on round buddles that rotate slowly and break downchannels as ore slime runs across the surface. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | You know, I'm the one that does all the night sweeps. I'm the one that does all the fieldwork (Birds of Prey; writing credit: Adam Armus; Nora Kay Foster) And who gets to see it? But the birds, the stars and the chimney sweeps. (Mary Poppins; writing credit: P.L. Travers; Bill Walsh) Sorry sweetie, it's sweeps! (Scary Movie; writing credit: Shawn Wayans; Marlon Wayans) Panic sweeps across the land (Quest for Camelot; writing credit: Vera Chapman; Kirk De Micco) She sweeps my ankles away from under me. I go down with one helluva bang (Lolita; writing credit: Vladimir Nabokov;) | |
Clever | Laughter is the brush that sweeps away the cobwebs of the heart. (references; author: unknown) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Periodicals |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Terrific hurricane sweeps San Juan--thousands homeless, damage estimated at millions in Porto Rico's capital. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Dorchester County, Maryland. High tide sweeps under the floor of this "waterman's" home on Gibson Island. Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
 |
| "Light Sweeps 6" by Erika Thorpe Commentary: "Light in motion." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. |
| Author | Date | Quotation |
Communist Manifesto | 1848 | If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. (reference) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Title | Author | Quote |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | Every cloud falls upon her, and all the ocean sweeps over her |
Grapes of Wrath | Steinbeck, John | She found her damp cloth and wiped the counter with circular sweeps. |
Walden | Thoreau, Henry David | We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Business | Sweeps conducted by police and military personnel searching for the EPR resulted in a number of arrests. (references) | |
The Miguel Agustin pro Juarez Center for Human Rights also cited seven disappearances related to anti-EPR sweeps. (references) | ||
Children | Panama | Police arrested and detained children for minor infractions during neighborhood sweeps. (references) |
Kyrgyz Republic | As a result, authorities conducted sweeps to round up and institutionalize street children. (references) | |
Civil Liberties | Egypt | Although there is no pattern of abuse of refugees, during random security sweeps the Government temporarily detained some refugees who were not carrying proper identification. (references) |
Human Rights | Cameroon | Such sweeps were conducted frequently. (references) |
Dominican Republic | The armed forces also carried out similar sweeps. (references) | |
Niger | Police, acting under authority given them by the Security Law, occasionally conducted sweeps to detain suspected criminals. (references) | |
Political Economy | Greece | Police sweeps resulted in the detention under often squalid conditions of undocumented immigrants. (references) |
Western Sahara | The Polisario later claimed that many other persons were detained during follow-up sweeps after November 17. The Polisario also claims that 131 of those arrested were holding a hunger strike in Laayoune Prison at year's end. (references) | |
Women | Kuwait | Police carried out large-scale anti-prostitution sweeps in Kuwait City and its suburbs in January, March, and October, arresting hundreds of procurers and prostitutes. (references) |
Lexicography | Devil's Dictionary | SOPHISTRY, n. The controversial method of an opponent, distinguished from one's own by superior insincerity and fooling. This method is that of the later Sophists, a Grecian sect of philosophers who began by teaching wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in brief, whatever men ought to know, but lost themselves in a maze of quibbles and a fog of words. His bad opponent's "facts" he sweeps away, And drags his sophistry to light of day; Then swears they're pushed to madness who resort To falsehood of so desperate a sort. Not so; like sods upon a dead man's breast, He lies most lightly who the least is pressed. Polydore Smith |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "SWEEPS" is generally used as a lexical verb (-s form) -- approximately 66.67% of the time. "SWEEPS" is used about 168 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Lexical Verb (-s form) | 66.67% | 112 | 30,646 |
| Noun (plural) | 33.33% | 56 | 45,296 |
| Total | 100.00% | 168 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "SWEEPS": a new broom sweeps clean. Additional references. | |
| Hypenated Usage | |
Ending with "SWEEPS": chimney-sweeps. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
billion sweeps.com | 486 |
billions sweeps.com | 29 |
billon sweeps.com | 17 |
billion pepsi sweeps.com | 7 |
billion sweeps,com | 5 |
billion dollar sweeps.com | 4 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "SWEEPS"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
French | balaye. (various references) | |
German | fegt. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | eepssway.(various references) | |
Turkish | süprüntü (brushing, candle-end, dreg, dregs, dross, garbage, offscourings, refuse, rejectamenta, rubbish, sweepings, trumpery), kırpıntı (clipping, clippings, flue, rag, refuse, scrap, shavings, trimmings), kırıntı (bit, chip, crumb, debris, fragment, ort, piece, scrap, scraps), döküntü (debris, detritus, dilapidated, dreg, excuse, fall out, fallout, heap, junk, litter, refuse, residuum, rubbish, rubble, scrap, skin eruption, spoils, tot, waste), ayaktakımı (canaille, hoi polloi, ragtag, ragtag and bobtail, riff raff, ruck, the dregs of mankind, the hoi polloi, the lower classes, the rabble, the scum of the earth, the vulgar, vulgar herd), çer çöp. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "SWEEPS": sweepstake, sweepstakes. (additional references) | |
Words ending with "SWEEPS": peesweeps, upsweeps. (additional references) | |
| |
"SWEEPS" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: dweebs, sweap, sweeds, swep, swepe, swes, swys. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "SWEEPS" (pronounced swē"ps) |
| 4 | -w ē" p s | weeps. |
| 3 | -ē" p s | beeps, creeps, heaps, jeeps, keeps, leaps, peeps, reaps, seeps, sleeps. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "e-e-p-s-s-w" | |
-1 letter: seeps, spews, sweep, weeps. | |
-2 letters: eses, ewes, pees, pews, seep, sees, sews, spew, weep, wees. | |
-3 letters: ess, ewe, pee, pes, pew, see, sew, wee. | |
-4 letters: es, pe, we. | |
| Words containing the letters "e-e-p-s-s-w" | |
+1 letter: pesewas, spewers. | |
+2 letters: stepwise, sweepers, sweetsop, upsweeps. | |
+3 letters: newspeaks, peepshows, peesweeps, powerless, prewashes, prowesses, sideswipe, snapweeds, speedways, sumpweeds, sweepiest, sweepings, sweetshop, sweetsops, winepress. | |
+4 letters: expressway, newspapers, newsperson, powderless, showpieces, sideswiped, sideswipes, sleepwalks, speedwells, spiderwebs, supersweet, superwaves, superwives, sweepbacks, sweepstake, sweetshops, swinepoxes, waveshapes, weaponless, whisperers. | |
+5 letters: expressways, horsepowers, jasperwares, newspersons, powerhouses, powerlessly, presweetens, spleenworts, spokeswomen, spongewares, superpowers, sweepstakes, viewerships, wastepapers, waterscapes, wimpinesses, winepresses, wispinesses. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Images: Digital Art 8. Quotations: Historic | 9. Quotations: Fiction 10. Quotations: Non-fiction 11. Usage Frequency 12. Expressions | 13. Expressions: Internet 14. Translations: Modern 15. Derivations 16. Rhymes | 17. Anagrams 18. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.