Swatches

Two years ago, Donald Trump was roundly mocked for saying Russia had taken over “vast swatches of land.” That wasn’t his first noteworthy use of “swatch,” though. In November 2015, he recommended: “In Syria, take a big swatch of land, which believe me, you get for the right price, okay? You take a big swatch and you don’t destroy all of Europe.”

A “swatch” is a fabric sample. And as anyone who was around in the eighties knows, a Swatch is a Swiss watch and it was once a very cool thing to own. Observers agreed that he meant to say “swaths” (or was it “swathes”?) and were obviously very pleased with themselves for knowing this.

So today I noticed this quote from the former CEO of Panera in the New Yorker: “Trump is a human hand grenade to blow up a society that isn’t working for big swatches of America.” It’s interesting that the quote is about Trump, the guy who is best known for misusing the word “swatch.” However, I don’t think that’s why the word is in here — in other words, it’s not some kind of sneery dig at Trump’s idiolect — in context, it seems to be a sincere usage.

Which leads us to the question: how many people are already using “swatch” in this way, and how long have they been doing it? I suspect it’s been going on for years and Trump was just the first prominent person to say it on TV.

I’m not surprised that “swatch” would take over for “swath” because the latter is an odd word. For one thing, it has two spellings, “swath” and “swathe.” My dictionary says the first is pronounced with an “ah” (as in “father”) or “aw” (as in “cause”) and an unvoiced th (as in “bath”).  The second can apparently be pronounced with an “ah” vowel or an “ay” (as in “day”) but not “aw,” and the th has to be voiced (as in “bathe”). Of course, that’s the noun “swathe” — the verb “swathe” means “to wrap, bind, or swaddle with bands.” Either way, it’s a word we’re much more likely to write than say, so only about 10% of native English speakers would be totally confident about pronouncing it. I just made that number up, but the point is: we all know how to say “swatch.”

Since actual swatches, i.e. fabric samples, are famously small, it does seem inappropriate to recruit them as descriptors for large territories. People who are afraid of “swath(e)” but don’t want to jump on the “swatch” bandwagon could try referring to vast “expanses,” “tracts,” or “stretches” of land. But if people are using a given term on TV and in the New Yorker, chances are it’s not going away, so prepare yourself for future discussions of who took which swatch of territory from whom on your favorite news channel. My linguistic pet peeve basket is full right now so I’m giving this one a pass.