Other forms: swept, sweeping, sweeps
To sweep is to clean a floor with a long brush. Sweep the floor, sweep up the leaves, sweep the yard.
The past tense is swept. It also means to move quickly and widely across something: the searchlight swept the field, a storm swept the coast, sweep somebody off their feet. To sweep something under the carpet is to hide a problem rather than deal with it. A sweep is also a chimney sweep, and a clean sweep means winning everything available. Note sweeping, as in a sweeping statement — too broad to be true.
1verbsweepTo clean a floor with a long brush.
“He swept the whole workshop before locking up.”
2verbmoveTo move quickly and widely across something.
“A fierce fire swept through the forest.”
3nounmovementA wide movement, or a complete win.
“They made a clean sweep of every category.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
sweep is a brushing or wide movement.
Middle English swepen is related to swoop and swift, from a Germanic root meaning to move rapidly. The brush and the searchlight are doing the same thing at different speeds.
Proto-Germanic
*swaipijaną
Proto-West Germanic
*swaipijan
Middle English
swepen
English, today
sweep
From Middle English swepen, from Proto-West Germanic swaipijan (unattested in Old English), from Proto-Germanic swaipijaną. Cognate with Early Modern West Frisian swiepe (“whip, cleanse, sweep”), from Old Frisian swēpa, suepa (“sweep”). More distantly related to Old Norse sveipa (whence Swedish svepa). See also swoop.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA