asweep en · ADV
Etymology
From a- + sweep.
Meanings
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(not-comparable) Sweeping, making a sweeping motion.
Where fierce hot winds have set the pine and myall boughs asweep
1890, Banjo Paterson, “The Man from Snowy River”, in The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, London: Macmillan, published 1896, page 49:When winds are asweep through the Pecos Valley, they whimper and moan in the barbed-wire fence like troubled ghosts.
1926, Walter Noble Burns, chapter 20, in The Saga of Billy the Kid, Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing, page 294:I thought of Mr. O’Neill, who was tall, pale and melancholy, with long white hair asweep, very like the picture of composers of my music book-covers.
1962, Austin Clarke, chapter 4, in Twice Round the Black Church, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, page 36:the line that goes wavingly asweep round the base of the holy mountain, separating it from the common earth.
1842, John Wilson, chapter 3, in The Recreations of Christopher North, volume 1, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, page 175:[…] low and gently rolling hills, some forested, some asweep with velvety swaths of rippling, growing grain.
1993, Dewey Lambdin, The Gun Ketch, New York: Donald J. Fine, Book 1, Chapter 1, p. 11: