- 1a piece of soft material used by a doctor, nurse, etc. for cleaning wounds or taking a sample from somebody’s body for testing
- 2an act of taking a sample from somebody’s body, with a swab to take a throat swab Word Originmid 17th cent. (in the sense ‘mop for cleaning the decks’): back-formation from swabber ‘sailor detailed to swab decks’, from early modern Dutch zwabber, from a Germanic base meaning ‘splash’ or ‘sway’. Wordfinderexaminebiopsy, diagnose, examine, sample, scan, swab, symptom, test, ultrasound, X-ray
swab
nounBrE BrE//swɒb//; NAmE NAmE//swɑːb//
Operations, Medical examinationsCheck pronunciation: swab
