I chose this short word, “swot”, because I came to know of its existence while playing Classic Words Free, a version of Scrabble, on my android this week. My opponent is the computer and it tells me if a word is invalid. When I have letters that don’t quite make a word I know, I make up a word that sounds like it could be a real word, and let the computer tell me if it’s legit or not.

So it was with the word “swot”: I was building off a “T” in the top line, three spaces away from a triple word score. I tried various combinations of the letters I had, making sure one of my tiles covered that red square (so I couldn’t use the words STOW or TOWS). And if I was going to get a triple word score, I wanted to use my “W”, my only tile worth more than 1 point. SWOT seemed like a word, although I’d never heard of it. The computer accepted it!

So here it is, a definition of this little word “swot”:

(Pronounced like “swat”)

Definition 1: A variant of “swat”

(British slang)
Definition 2: (verb) To study or work hard (used without object; swotted, swotting)
Definition 3: (noun) a student who studies diligently, especially to the exclusion of other activities; grind.
Definition 4: hard study or hard work; strong effort

Origin: (1840-50)  variation of “sweat”

(The origin of the word “swat”, however, is older: 1790s – a variation of “squat”.)