Other forms: swishing, swished
To swish is to move with a soft hissing sound. Swish a tail, the curtains swished, a swish of silk.
The sound is soft and quick, made by cloth, a tail, a cane or a skirt, and the word is simply what that sounds like. In basketball a swish is a shot that goes through the net without touching the rim, which is the same noise. In British slang, swish as an adjective means smart and expensive — a swish hotel — and is faintly dated.
1verbswishTo move with a soft hissing sound.
“The horse's tail swished from side to side to keep the flies away.”
2adjectivesmartSmart and expensive, in British slang.
“They took us to a swish restaurant with white tablecloths and waiters in bow ties.”
swish is a soft rushing sound.
The word is imitative, coined from the sound itself in the eighteenth century. English has a whole family of these — whoosh, hiss, swoosh — and none of them was borrowed from anywhere.
From noun, imitative of the sound
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire