SWARD

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sward mean? 

• SWARD (noun)
  The noun SWARD has 1 sense:

1. surface layer of ground containing a mat of grass and grass roots

  Familiarity information: SWARD used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SWARD (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Surface layer of ground containing a mat of grass and grass roots

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Synonyms:

greensward; sod; sward; turf

Hypernyms ("sward" is a kind of...):

ground; land; soil (material in the top layer of the surface of the earth in which plants can grow (especially with reference to its quality or use))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "sward"):

divot (a piece of turf dug out of a lawn or fairway (by an animals hooves or a golf club))

 Context examples 

Just before him Tom lay motionless upon the sward; but the murderer minded him not a whit, cleansing his blood-stained knife the while upon a wisp of grass.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The big barouche came lumbering over the sward in our direction until Sir Lothian Hume caught sight of us, when he shouted to his postillions to pull up.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In silence they wandered together over the velvet turf and on through the broad Minstead woods, where the old lichen-draped beeches threw their circles of black shadow upon the sunlit sward.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

From the pools of blood and the enormous lumps of flesh scattered in every direction over the green sward we imagined at first that a number of animals had been killed, but on examining the remains more closely we discovered that all this carnage came from one of these unwieldy monsters, which had been literally torn to pieces by some creature not larger, perhaps, but far more ferocious, than itself.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He was following the track, his misgivings increasing with every step which took him nearer to that home which he had never seen, when of a sudden the trees began to thin and the sward to spread out onto a broad, green lawn, where five cows lay in the sunshine and droves of black swine wandered unchecked.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Then as the gorse clumps grew thinner, and the sward more level, those on foot began to run, the riders struck in their spurs, the drivers cracked their whips, and away they all streamed in the maddest, wildest cross-country steeplechase, the yellow barouche and the crimson curricle, which held the two champions, leading the van.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Close to the banks of the Garonne there lay a little tract of green sward, with the high wall of a prior's garden upon one side and an orchard with a thick bristle of leafless apple-trees upon the other.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)