Swimming is the sport of moving through water with your arms and legs. Go swimming, swimming lessons, a swimming pool.
It is one of the few sports that is also a survival skill, which is why school lessons exist — and about one adult in four in England cannot swim twenty-five metres. The four competitive strokes are front crawl, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly. Note swimming as an adjective meaning full of tears or spinning: eyes swimming, head swimming.
1nounswimmingThe activity of moving through water.
“Swimming is my favourite sport, and I go to the pool twice a week.”
2adjectivespinningSpinning or full of tears.
“Her eyes were swimming with tears as she said goodbye.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
swimming is a sport.
Swim plus -ing, from Old English swimman. Every Germanic language keeps the verb, and its earlier history beyond that is not clear.
Middle English
swymmynge
English, today
swimming
From Middle English swymmynge. Equivalent to swim + -ing.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA