swanning
- 1Present participle of swan.
The manager kept swanning about the building as if he owned the place.
Instead of helping with the move, they went swanning off on vacation.
Note
The -ing form belongs almost entirely to the idle, drifting meaning of swan. The American dialect swan meaning "declare" lives chiefly in first-person present constructions (I swan!), so it rarely takes this shape. Because the verb is intransitive, swanning takes no object and leans on a direction word instead: swanning about, swanning off. As a gerund it can head a noun phrase, as in all that swanning around.
swanning is a form of swan
swan, verb: To wander or move about idly, aimlessly, or with a pretentiously casual air. Full entry
- Spelling
- swan → swanning: double the n, add -ing
Use it in a sentence
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