Swinging

How to spell swinging

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce swinging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does swinging mean?

1. verbMoving freely back and forth or from side to side, as if suspended from a fixed point.
2. adjectiveLively, fashionable, and full of energy, typically describing a place or era.

Swinging in a sentence

• verb

  The gate kept swinging open in the strong wind.

• adjective

  The city earned a reputation as a swinging hub of music and fashion.

• verb

  She sat on the porch, swinging her legs over the edge.

• adjective

  His parents often reminisce about the swinging sixties.

Where does swinging come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb swingan, which originally meant to beat, to strike, or to flog, and also to rush or fling oneself violently. It belongs to a wider Germanic family, with relatives such as the German schwingen, meaning to swing or to brandish, sharing the same root sense of forceful movement through the air. Over the centuries the harsh idea of striking softened into the familiar notion of moving freely back and forth, as a pendulum or a child on a rope does. The participial form swinging simply adds the -ing ending, and the spelling keeps both letter g sounds: the hard g of the root and the soft -ing ending, which is the small trap writers face. From the 1950s and 1960s it also took on the breezy figurative sense of lively, fashionable, and uninhibited, as in the celebrated phrase the swinging sixties.

How the word is built

• swing (Old English swingan: to move freely back and forth)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)