Swaying

How to spell swaying

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce swaying

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does swaying mean?

1. verbMoving slowly back and forth or from side to side, or in the act of influencing someone's view.

Swaying in a sentence

• The tall pines were swaying gently in the evening breeze.

• The dancers kept swaying in time with the slow music.

Where does swaying come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The base verb 'sway' first appears in Middle English as 'sweyen', meaning to move or be carried along, and it is most likely rooted in the Old Norse 'sveigja', which meant to bend, to swing aside, or to make something yield. Norse and related North Germanic forms passed easily into English during the medieval period, when Scandinavian settlement left a deep mark on northern English vocabulary. Over time the verb settled into its modern senses of rocking gently from side to side and, figuratively, of influencing or controlling someone's opinion, as in 'holding sway'. The present participle 'swaying' is formed regularly by adding '-ing', and because the verb ends in a vowel sound the spelling simply keeps the 'y' and adds the suffix, giving 'swaying' rather than any doubled or dropped letter. That clean, predictable formation is why the word rarely trips up writers once the base 'sway' is in mind.

How the word is built

• sway (to swing or lean from side to side)
• -ing (present participle suffix)