sweepings


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sweep·ing

 (swē′pĭng)
adj.
1. Having wide-ranging influence or effect: sweeping changes.
2. Moving in or as if in a wide curve: a sweeping gesture; a sweeping glance.
3. Indiscriminate; wholesale: sweeping generalizations.
4. Overwhelming; complete: a sweeping victory.
n.
1. The action of one that sweeps.
2. sweepings Things swept up; refuse.

sweep′ing·ly adv.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

sweepings

(ˈswiːpɪŋz)
pl n
debris, litter, or refuse
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Sweepings

 a collection of persons or things, 1641; rubbish. See also riff-raff.
Example:
Dictionary of Collective Nouns and Group Terms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Translations

sweepings

plKehricht m, → Dreck m; (fig, of society etc) → Abschaum m
Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007
References in classic literature ?
Suddenly, he saw, among the sweepings in a corner, something round and white that looked very much like a hen's egg.
It was not a bad day for a walk, if you were young and strong, and could breast the great gusts of wind which came sweeping in from the sea.
He pointed with a sweeping gesture, as though calling Adam's attention to the extent of the view.
I CAN never forget the eighteen or twenty days during which the light trade-winds were silently sweeping us towards the islands.
See our line across the plain, Like a heel-rope bent again, Reaching, writhing, rolling far, Sweeping all away to war!
First, when used as a fin for progression; Second, when used as a mace in battle; Third, in sweeping; Fourth, in lobtailing; Fifth, in peaking flukes.
By good fortune, paddle as I pleased, the tide was still sweeping me down; and there lay the HISPANIOLA right in the fairway, hardly to be missed.
And as the children ran they heard the sound of the broom sweeping the ground close behind them, so instantly they threw the handkerchief down over their shoulder, and in a moment a deep, broad river flowed behind them.
They alluded also to other and more recent woe, but in the midst of their talk their voices seemed to melt into the sound of the wind sweeping mournfully among the autumn leaves; and when the lady lifted her eyes, there was she kneeling in the hollow between three hills.
He was only twelve, but that winter he had got the job of sweeping out the Norwegian church and making the fire in it every Sunday morning.
The light footstep moved about the kitchen, followed by the sound of the sweeping brush, hardly making so much noise as the lightest breeze that chases the autumn leaves along the dusty path; and Adam's imagination saw a dimpled face, with dark bright eyes and roguish smiles looking backward at this brush, and a rounded figure just leaning a little to clasp the handle.
The gabled brick, tile, and freestone houses had almost dried off for the season their integument of lichen, the streams in the meadows were low, and in the sloping High Street, from the West Gateway to the mediaeval cross, and from the mediaeval cross to the bridge, that leisurely dusting and sweeping was in progress which usually ushers in an old-fashioned market-day.