swimming

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)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.”

2. (countable, uncountable)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.”

verb

1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present)present participle and gerund of swim