What does sw on a radio stand for?

Answer 1

"SW" stands for "short-wave". That's the label out of the 1940s and 50s for the radio bands

at higher frequencies than commercial AM broadcast. They're used for international broadcast,

and a lot of other services.

The term is very imprecise, and doesn't refer to any hard and fast range of frequencies.

When people used to talk about "short-wave", they were generally referring to the bands

maybe from 1.6 MHz to 30 MHz. The bands included on your radio with the "SW" label on it

probably fall into this range. There isn't as much interesting listening on those bands as

there was a few decades ago; but you should still scan them, slowly, some evening, just

to see what you can find, if you've never done it before.