swike means deceitful; treacherous. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.
swike is pronounced /swaɪk/.
Why “swike” is a great word
SWIKE — [Adjective, Noun, Verb] It means deceitful or treacherous; the deceit, the traitor, or a hiding place; the act of deceiving or betraying. From Middle English swiken, from Old English swīcan ("to wander, depart, fail, desert, deceive"), from Proto-West Germanic *swīkwan, from Proto-Germanic *swīkwaną ("to dodge, swerve, avoid, betray"), from Proto-Indo-European *sweyg- ("to turn, move around, wander"). Unlike "betray," which fractures a specific trust, or "deceitful," which describes a character's stain, swike is a broader, older vanishing. It is the feigned path that leads to a precipice, the cold hearth of a sworn ally who has quietly departed, and the silent abandonment of a post when the watch is most needed—a lexical artifact of the oldest human understanding that to turn away is the deepest treachery.
Etymology
From Middle English swiken, from Old English swīcan (“to wander, depart, cease from, yield, give way, fail, fall short, be wanting, abandon, desert, turn traitor, deceive, rebel”), from Proto-West Germanic *swīkwan, from Proto-Germanic *swīkwaną (“to dodge, swerve, avoid, betray”), from Proto-Indo-European *sweyg- (“to turn, move around, wander, swing”).
adj
- Deceitful; treacherous.
noun
- Deceit; treachery.
- A deceiver; betrayer, traitor.“The Saxon Chronicle contradicts itself as to Algar's outlawry, stating in one passage that he was outlawed without any kind of guilt, and in another that he was outlawed as swike, or traitor, and that he made a confession of it before all the men there gathered.”
- A hiding place; den; cave.
verb
- To deceive, cheat; betray.
- To stop, cease.