swim

CEFRA1

/swɪm/

verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    verb

    To move through water using your body.

  2. 02

    verb

    Extra detail

    To become immersed in, or as if in, or flooded with, or as if with, a liquid.

Examples

  • Can you swim as fast as he?

  • It's too wide. We can't swim across.

At a glance

Sits at A1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5

Also pronounced

  • /sʋɪm/

Deep Dive

verb

Extra meanings

  1. To move around freely because of excess space.

  2. To move through the water, without touching the bottom; to propel oneself in water by natural means.

  3. To traverse (a specific body of water, or a specific distance) by swimming; or, to use a specific swimming stroke; or, to compete in a specific swimming event.

More examples

In context

  • You can swim, can't you?

  • For exercise, we like to swim laps around the pool.

  • a bare few bits of meat swimming in watery sauce

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

During summer, many children love to blank in the cool pool water.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

verb

From Middle English swymmen, from Old English swimman (“to swim, float”) (class III strong verb; past tense swamm, past participle geswummen), from Proto-West Germanic *swimman, from Proto-Germanic *swimmaną (“to swim”), from Proto-Indo-European *swem(bʰ)- (“to be unsteady, move, swim”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian sweem, swome, swume, swumi, swumme, swääm (“to swim”), Saterland Frisian and West Frisian swimme (“to swim”), Dutch zwemmen (“to swim”), German schwimmen (“to swim”), Limburgish schwämme, zwömme (“to swim”), Low German swimmen (“to swim”), Luxembourgish schwammen (“to swim”), Vilamovian švymma, śwyma, śwymma (“to swim”), Yiddish שווימען (shvimen, “to swim”), Danish and No...