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swimming

nounnounverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ˈswɪmɪŋ//
  • //ˈswɪmiŋ//

The act or art of sustaining and propelling the body in water.

noun

  1. 1

    The act or art of sustaining and propelling the body in water.

    Triathlon competitors take part in open water swimming.

    The daring adventures of the American people in their scalings of the Alps and the Rocky mountains and in their swimmings across the Niagara rapids […]

    Though we don’t all reach nirvana when we swim, swimming may well be that last refuge from connectivity — and, for some, the only way to find the solitary self.

Etymology

From Middle English swymmynge. Equivalent to swim (“to move through water”, verb) + -ing (suffix forming gerunds).

noun

  1. 1

    The state of being dizzy or in vertigo.

    Then I take my pipe of Tabacco, sitting close by a warme fire, the space of halfe an houre and more, vntill the giddinesse and swimming in my head be past, and the medicine also haue done it feate : then I vse to gargle my mouth with a cuppe of beere, well warmed with a toste.

    But when the worms are killed with the aforesaid medicines, you must driue them out without delay : for there proceedeth a vicious exhalation from them, which both destroyeth appetite, and hurteth digestion, and being lifted vpward, it causeth swimmings, and other euils.

    [The Speedwell] doth also wonderfully helpe the memory, and to ease all turnings and swimmings, and other paines of the head, and as it is sayd helpeth women to become fruitfull, that were barren[.]

    Swimmings of the head and intestinal pains seemed the prelude of dissolution.

Etymology

Etymology tree English swim Proto-Germanic *-ungō Old English -ung Middle English -ynge English -ing English swimming From swim (“to be dizzy”, verb) + -ing (suffix forming gerunds).

verb

  1. 1

    Also a form of swimpresent participle and gerund of swim

Etymology

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Forms

plural
swimmings
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).