Swing

How to spell swing

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce swing

What does swing mean?

1. verbTo move back and forth or from side to side while suspended or pivoting from a fixed point.
2. nounA hanging seat on which a person sits and moves back and forth, or a sweeping movement or shift.

Swing in a sentence

• verb

  The heavy gate began to swing shut in the wind.

• noun

  The children queued for a turn on the swing in the park.

• verb

  He watched the pendulum swing steadily inside the old clock.

• noun

  The poll showed a sudden swing in voter opinion.

Where does swing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, descending directly from the Old English verb swingan, which meant to beat, to strike, or to scourge, and also to rush or fling oneself about. It belongs to a wider Germanic family, with relatives such as the German schwingen, meaning to swing or vibrate, all pointing back to a Proto-Germanic root for forceful, swaying motion. Over the centuries the violent sense of striking faded, and the gentler idea of moving back and forth through the air came to dominate. The familiar noun for a hanging seat that children ride is a relatively late development, recorded from around the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Because the word stayed inside English the whole time and never passed through French or Latin, its spelling is plain and phonetic, with the only quirk being the -ng ending that represents a single nasal sound.

How the word is built

• swing (from Old English swingan: to beat, strike, move violently)