Swet or Swate in Sanskrit means white

Cowboys loved a colorful phrase! This one means a violent, open-handed blow to the face. You can see where they took the word "swat" and changed it to suit them.

It went from Old English to Middle English to today's English. Old English came from proto-Germanic (the long-dead language that gave rise to today's Germanic languages). Proto-Germanic came from proto-Indo-European, which is the ancestor of most of the languages spoken in Europe, India, and some nearby areas. Before proto-Indo-European, presumably people kind of grunted and pointed at stuff.