swab
noun/swɒb/
/swɑːb/
- a piece of soft material used by a doctor, nurse, etc. for cleaning wounds or taking a sample from somebody’s body for testing see also cotton swabTopics Healthcarec2
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- an 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’.
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