swim

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“

You do have to be able to write in English, swim, and be over 18.

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American Heritage Dictionary (18)

intransitive verb To move through water by means of the limbs, fins, or tail.
intransitive verb To move as though gliding through water.
intransitive verb To float on water or another liquid.

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Century Dictionary (18)

To float on or in water or other fluid. He lep in the water, … & swam swiftili awei. William of Palerne (E. E. T. S.), l. 2760. Plankes and lighter things swimme and are preserved, whereas the more weighty sinke and are lost. Aubrey, Lives (Thomas Hobbes). Five or six Heaps of Cabbage, Carrots, Turnips, or some other Herbs or Roots, well pepper'd and salted, and swimming in Butter. Quoted in Ashton's Social Life in Reign of Queen Anne, I. 186.
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. Tyrants swim safest in a crimson flood. Lust's Dominion, v. 1. Leap in with me into this angry flood, And swim to yonder point. Shak., J. C., i. 2. 104.
Hence, to move or be propelled on or through water by any means. Ure schip bigan to swymme To this londes brymme. King Horn (E. E. T. S.), l. 189.

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I went back in for a swim, then spent the hot part of the afternoon over fruit punch at the shaded bar, picked up jerk chicken at the Pork Pit, and climbed back to my guesthouse to watch the sunset as I ate on the terrace Jan. — BETTER TO HAVE LOVED
As for Quoyle, the most telling momento of his six-hour swim were his dark blue toenails, dyed by his cheap socks And when her house was empty again, Quoyle gone and the teapot scalded and put away on the shelf, the floor mopped, she went outside to hang Quoyle ;s damp blanket, to take in yesterday ;s forgotten, drenty wash. — The Shipping News
Although I could not swim, and saw no way of escaping death, I felt no dread in my then situation, having no desire to live. — The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African
When you are learning to swim, the teacher begins by giving you this important piece of advice: “Have confidence, and all will be well.” If you follow his advice, you easily keep yourself up on the water, and it seems perfectly natural; thus you learn to swim. — Memoirs of Robert-Houdin
Jason could see the stars when he happened to look up, but overall the swim was about as interesting as a long series of laps in a darkened indoor pool. — Asimov'sSF,March2008

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bathe · ride · stroll · golf · climb · ski · walk · splash · workout · nap · traveling · hike

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (5)

American Heritage Dictionary (1)

Middle English swimmen, from Old English swimman.

Century Dictionary (4)

from Middle English swimmen, swymmen (preterit swam, plural swummen, swommen), from Anglo-Saxon swimman (preterit swam, swom, plural swummon, past participle swummen) = Old Saxon swimman = Middle Dutch swimmen, swemmen, Dutch zwemmen = Middle Low German swemmen, Low German swimmen = Old High German swimman, Middle High German swimmen, German schwimmen = Icelandic svimma, symja = Swedish simma = Danish svömme (Gothic (Moesogothic) not recorded), swim; cf. Icelandic svamla, swim, sumla, be flooded; Gothic (Moesogothic) swumsl, a pond. Hence ult. sound; cf. swamp, sump.
from swim, v.
from Middle English swime, sweme, swaime, a dizziness, swoon, trance, from Anglo-Saxon swima, a swoon, swimming in the head, = OFries. swima = Middle Dutch swijme, Dutch zwijm, a swoon, = Icelandic svimi, dizziness (sveimr, a bustle, stir, = Norwegian sveim, sickness: see sweam), = Danish svime, a faintingfit; cf. Swedish svimma, be dizzy, svindel, dizziness, svimning, a swoon, Danish svimle, be giddy, besvime, swoon, svimmel, giddiness; with formative -m (-ma), from the root of Old High German swīnan, Middle High German swīnen, fade away, vanish, swoon, Old High German swintan, swoon, vanish, Middle High German swinden, faint, swoon, German schwinden, vanish, fade away, schwindel, vertigo, Icelandic svīa, svina, subside, as a swelling, Swedish svindel, giddiness, svinna, disappear, Danish svinde, fade away, etc. Cf. sweam, sweamous, sweamish, squeamous, squeamish.
from swim, n. This verb is now usually confused with swim (used as in quots. under I., 4), from which it takes its principal parts.

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