swine, you

   ‘Swine’ is now used far more often as an insulting vocative than as a normal word. In normal usage it has been replaced by ‘pig’ (occasionally by ‘hog’), both of which are themselves used as terms of address, and both probably less forceful than ‘swine’.

   It is usually men who are called ‘swine’, by women or other men, and use of this particular term has been common since the fourteenth century. It is a convenient shorthand way of telling someone that you think him dirty, greedy, and ugly. Those features are sometimes emphasized by repetition, or further unpleasant characteristics are mentioned: ‘you lousy swine’ occurs in A Kind 01 Loving, by Stan Barstow; ‘you dirty little swine’ is in No Highway, by Nevil Shute; ‘you bloody swine’ (as well as examples of ‘you swine’) in The River of Diamonds, by Geoffrey Jenkins; ‘you fornicating swine’ is in Bhowani Junction, by John Masters, and so it goes on.

   Between intimates, insults can of course be merely friendly or a kind of covert endearment. ‘You mean old swine’ is used in that way in Room at the Top, by John Braine, the ‘old’ having a softening effect.