(a) A piece of timber used in building; a rafter, beam; a board; -- also coll.; firre sparre; hilinge of sparres, a roof; joininge of sparres, a roof or building; maister sparre, a main beam or……

(a) An upright piece of timber used as support in a wall, partition, etc. [quots. ?c1475 and a1500 may belong to sense 4]; stoth nail, nails of some kind used in fastening such timbers; (b) fig. a……

For all words beginning with sw- from here to the end of this volume [of the print MED], the practice of the MED is to record all variant forms except those beginning with su-; forms with su- are……