Swimmers

How to spell swimmers

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce swimmers

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does swimmers mean?

1. nounPeople who move through water by moving their arms and legs.

Swimmers in a sentence

• The strongest swimmers in the club train every morning before work.

• Lifeguards warned the swimmers to stay inside the marked area.

Where does swimmers come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word builds on the verb 'swim', which descends from Old English 'swimman', meaning 'to move through water by propelling the body'. That verb belonged to a wide Germanic family, with close relatives in Old Norse 'svimma' and modern German 'schwimmen', all carrying the same watery sense. The agent suffix '-er', also of Germanic origin, turns the verb into a noun naming the person who performs the action, so a 'swimmer' is simply 'one who swims'. The doubled 'm' is the spelling trap here: because 'swim' ends in a single vowel followed by a single consonant, the consonant doubles before the '-er' ending, giving 'swimmer', and the plural '-s' then produces 'swimmers'. The same doubling rule explains why writers also get 'running' and 'beginner' wrong when they forget it.

How the word is built

• swim (Old English swimman: to move through water)
• -m- (doubled consonant)
• -er (agent noun)
• -s (plural)