Sweaty means damp with the salty water the skin gives off. Sweaty hands, a sweaty shirt, hot and sweaty.
Sweating is how the body cools itself: the water evaporates and takes heat with it, which is why humid heat feels so much worse than dry heat. Sweaty palms are a standard sign of nerves. Note sweat, both noun and verb; perspiration, which is the polite word; and no sweat, meaning no trouble at all, which is American and now used everywhere.
1adjectivesweatyDamp with sweat.
“He wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans before shaking hers.”
sweaty is a damp state.
Old English swat is Germanic and related to Latin sudor, which gives English exude and the medical term sudorific. The Germanic sw and the Latin s are the regular correspondence, as in sweet and suave.
Middle English
swety
English, today
sweaty
From Middle English swety, equivalent to sweat + -y.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA