swim
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "swim", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "swim" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "swim" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
swim is aEnglishverb. It means: To move through the water, without touching the bottom; to propel oneself in water by natural means. Pronounced /swɪm/. It ranks #5,089 in English word frequency. Often confused with swot and swing.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | swim |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /swɪm/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #5,089 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for swim is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /swɪm/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,089 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for swim, with forms such as "siwm", "sswim", and "swimm". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "swot", "swing", "Swiss", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English swymmen, from Old English swimman (“to swim, float”) (class III strong verb; past tense swamm, past participle geswummen), from Proto-West Germanic *swimman, from Proto-Germanic *swimmaną (“to swim”), from Proto-Indo-European *swem(bʰ)- … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is swim, spelled S-W-I-M, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To move through the water, without touching the bottom; to propel oneself in water by natural means.
- 2To become immersed in, or as if in, or flooded with, or as if with, a liquid.
- 3To move around freely because of excess space.
- 4To traverse (a specific body of water, or a specific distance) by swimming; or, to use a specific swimming stroke; or, to compete in a specific swimming event.
- 5To cause to swim.
- 6To float.
- 7To be overflowed or drenched.
- 8To immerse in water to make the lighter parts float.
- 9To test (a suspected witch) by throwing into a river; those who floated rather than sinking were deemed to be witches.
- 10To glide along with a waving motion.
- 11To have a great quantity of something.
Etymology
From Middle English swymmen, from Old English swimman (“to swim, float”) (class III strong verb; past tense swamm, past participle geswummen), from Proto-West Germanic *swimman, from Proto-Germanic *swimmaną (“to swim”), from Proto-Indo-European *swem(bʰ)- (“to be unsteady, move, swim”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian sweem, swome, swume, swumi, swumme, swääm (“to swim”), Saterland Frisian and West Frisian swimme (“to swim”), Dutch zwemmen (“to swim”), German schwimmen (“to swim”), Limburgish schwämme, zwömme (“to swim”), Low German swimmen (“to swim”), Luxembourgish schwammen (“to swim”), Vilamovian švymma, śwyma, śwymma (“to swim”), Yiddish שווימען (shvimen, “to swim”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål svømme (“to swim”), Faroese svimja (“to swim”), Norn suma (“to swim”), Norwegian Nynorsk svemja, svemje, svømma, svømme, symja, symje (“to swim”), Swedish simma (“to swim”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: siwm,sswim,swimm,swmi,swwim,wsim
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for swim
Misspelling Variants of "swim"
Frequency rank: #5,089 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: