No Sweat, and Other Ways English Uses Perspiration
Sweaty means covered in sweat. English builds a surprising number of idioms about effort and worry from a single bodily function.
Sweaty describes anything damp with sweat — a person, a shirt, a room. English treats sweating as the standard measure of effort and anxiety: you can *sweat over* a problem, *break out in a cold sweat*, *sweat blood*, tell someone *no sweat*, or *sweat it out* while waiting for news. Humans are unusually good at sweating, which is part of why we can run long distances in heat.
- Covered in sweat. *A sweaty crowd.*
- Causing sweat. *A sweaty climb.*
- Sweat — the fluid or the verb. *Cold sweat.*
- No sweat — no trouble. *No sweat, I'll do it.*
- Sweat it out — endure an anxious wait. *We had to sweat it out.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Adjective | sweaty | Sweaty palms. |
| Noun | sweat | Beads of sweat. |
| Verb | sweat | I'm sweating. |
| Comparative | sweatier | Sweatier than yesterday. |
| Compound | sweatshirt | A grey sweatshirt. |
- He arrived sweaty and out of breath.Literal.
- Don't sweat the small stuff.Idiom: don't worry about trivia.
- She sweated over the report for a week.Effort.
Why humans sweat so well
- Millions of sweat glands spread across the whole body
- Mostly hairless skin — evaporation works better without fur
- Cooling while moving — most mammals must stop and pant instead
- Persistence hunting — the theory that early humans ran prey to exhaustion in heat
- The cost — sweating hard means losing water and salt fast
Old English *swat*, sweat, from a Proto-Germanic root; the adjective *sweaty* is recorded from the 1300s.
Where does no sweat come from?
American informal English of the mid-twentieth century, meaning the task requires no effort worth mentioning.
Do humans sweat more than other animals?
We are among the most effective sweaters. Most mammals rely on panting, which does not work as well while running.