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sawney

/ˈsɔːni/noun, adjective

sawney is a noun meaning “A fool, an idiot” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-A-W-N-E-Y, and it appears about once in every 35 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of sawney is sawneys.

What does sawney mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A fool, an idiot.

  2. 2

    UKobsoleteBacon.

adjective

  1. 1

    foolish, stupid

noun

as Sawney
  1. 1

    archaicderogatoryA Scotsman.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce sawney?

  • /ˈsɔːni/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Forms of sawney

  • sawneys plural
  • more sawney comparative
  • most sawney superlative

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is sawney?

Sawney appears about once in every 35 million words in written English, the 180,281st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Where does sawney come from?

(fool, idiot): From Sawney, a Scots variant of the personal name Sandy.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).