swim

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To move through water by means of the limbs, fins, or tail.
2. v. To move as though gliding through water.
3. v. To float on water or another liquid.
4. v. To be covered or flooded with or as if with a liquid: chicken swimming in gravy.
5. v. To possess a superfluity; abound: After winning the lottery, she was swimming in money.
6. v. To experience a floating or giddy sensation; be dizzy: "his brain still swimming with the effects of the last night's champagne” ( Robert Smith Surtees).
7. v. To appear to spin or reel lazily: The room swam before my eyes.
8. v. To move through or across (a body of water) by swimming: She swam the channel.
9. v. To execute (a particular stroke) in swimming.
10. v. To cause to swim or float.
11. n. The act of swimming.
12. n. A period of time spent swimming.
13. n. A gliding motion.
14. n. A state of dizziness.
15. n. An area, as of a river, abounding in fish.
16. adj. Of, relating to, or used for swimming: a swim mask.
17. idiom. in the swim Active in the general current of affairs.
18. idiom. swim against the stream To move counter to a prevailing trend.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To float on or in water or other fluid.
2. To move on or in water by natural means of locomotion, as an animal, many of which can so move, though the water be not their natural element, and swimming not their habit. The act is accomplished in many ways, by different movements of the body or of the limbs, or by various combinations of such motions. Man swims with the arms and legs, or with the legs alone, in an attitude and with an action most like that of the frog. Ordinary quadrupeds can swim with movements of the legs much like walking. Some of these are specially fitted for swimming without decided modification of structure, as the otter, the beaver, the muskrat, though often in these cases the tail takes some part in propelling or guiding the animal; other mammals, as the pinnipeds, and especially the cetaceans and sirenians, swim more or less exactly like fishes, the propulsion being mainly from the movements of the tail and hinder part of the body, and the flippers or fins being mainly used for steadying the body or guiding the course. All such mammals swim under as well as on the water. Web-footed birds, and some whose feet are scarcely or not webbed, swim on or under water, chiefly by means of the feet; but many of them accomplish a kind of flight under water with the wings, and use the feet chiefly as rudders. Such is especially the case with penguins, whose wings are flipper-like; and with the dippers (Cinclidæ), which are thrush-like birds, and fly under water as they do in the air, without using their feet at all. Aquatic serpents swim with a wriggling or writhing motion of the whole body like that with which they crawl on land; in some of these, however, the tail is flattened to serve as a fin. (See Hydrophidæ, and cuts under sea-serpent, Hydrophis, and Platurus.) Aquatic anurous batrachians swim with their legs alone, when adult; their larvæ (tadpoles), and all tailed batrachians, swim like fishes, by movements of the hind part of the body and tail. Aquatic turtles swim with all four legs, and especially, in the cases of the marine forms, with their enlarged fore flippers. Nearly all crustaceans are aquatic, and swim with very variously modified limbs and tail, their natatorial organs being usually abdominal or postabdominal. (See swimmeret, pleopod, rhipidura.) Many insects swim by the movement of specially modified legs which serve as oars, or in the cases of larvæ by undulatory movements of the whole body; some swim only on their backs, and others float, walk, or run on the surface of the water. A few mollusks, without shells, swim with an undulation of the body or of processes of the mantle, but their usual modes of swimming are unlike those of animals with ordinary limbs or tail; some swim by energetic flapping of bivalved shells, others by ejecting a stream of water through siphons, or by setting a sort of sail which wafts them over the water. Aquatic worms swim by wriggling the whole body, and also by the action of multitudinous parapods or cilia. Jellyfishes and comb-jellies swim by rhythmical pulsations of a swimming-bell, or of the whole body, assisted or not by the action of some special organs. Animalcules swim mainly by ciliary action, but also by changes in the shapes of their bodies, and in some cases by special formations. See swimming-bell, -bladder, -fin, -foot.
3. Hence, to move or be propelled on or through water by any means.
4. To glide with a smooth motion, literally or figuratively.
5. To be flooded; be overflowed or drenched.
6. To overflow; abound; have abundance.
7. To pass or cross by swimming; move on or in by swimming: as, to swim a stream.
8. To immerse in water, that the lighter parts may swim: as, to swim wheat for seed.
9. To cause to swim or float: as, to swim a horse across a river.
10. To furnish with sufficient depth of water to swim in.
11. n. The act of swimming; period or extent of swimming: as, to take a swim.
12. n. A smooth swaying gliding motion.
13. n. The sound or swimming-bladder of a fish.
14. n. A part of a stream, or other piece of water, deep and free from rocks and other obstructions, and much frequented by fish.
15. n. A dizziness; swoon.
16. To be dizzy or vertiginous; have giddiness; have a sensation as if the head were turning round; also, to have, or appear to have, a whirling motion: as, everything swam before his eyes.
17. In cricket, to curve in the air: said of the ball.

Wiktionary

1. v. intransitive, archaic To float.
2. v. intransitive To move through the water, without touching the bottom; to propel oneself in water by natural means.
3. v. transitive To traverse (a specific body of water, or a specific distance) by swimming; or, to utilize a specific swimming stroke; or, to compete in a specific swimming event.
4. v. uncommon To cause to swim.
5. n. An act or instance of swimming.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To be supported by water or other fluid; not to sink; to float.
2. v. To move progressively in water by means of strokes with the hands and feet, or the fins or the tail.
3. v. To be overflowed or drenched.
4. v. Fig.: To be as if borne or floating in a fluid.
5. v. obsolete To be filled with swimming animals.
6. v. To pass or move over or on by swimming.
7. v. To cause or compel to swim; to make to float.
8. v. To immerse in water that the lighter parts may float.
9. n. The act of swimming; a gliding motion, like that of one swimming.
10. n. The sound, or air bladder, of a fish.
11. n. engraving A part of a stream much frequented by fish.
12. v. To be dizzy; to have an unsteady or reeling sensation.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. be covered with or submerged in a liquid
2. v. travel through water
3. n. the act of swimming
4. v. be dizzy or giddy
5. v. move as if gliding through water
6. v. be afloat either on or below a liquid surface and not sink to the bottom