swinging

Pluralswingings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of swing.

   The gate kept swinging in the wind throughout the storm.

   She spent the morning swinging a golf club at the driving range.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every sense of the verb. It covers a gate turning on its hinges, dancing, riding a swing, and the grim old idiom of swinging for a crime on the gallows. After be it builds progressive tenses (is swinging). Used as a noun it names the activity, which is where the noun for motion and the partner-swapping practice stand on their own.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act or motion of something that swings, moving back and forth or around a fixed point.

   The steady swinging of the chandelier warned them of the tremor.

   A loose hinge gave the door a slow swinging whenever a breeze passed.

   Similarswaying, oscillation

   Note

   Usually a mass noun for motion, it also takes a plural when the movement is repeated or figurative. The Socialist Review of 1973 mocks a politician's "pendulum-like swingings between Liberalism and Independent Labourism". This is the plural worth knowing: swingings of opinion or allegiance, where the back-and-forth is in the mind rather than in a chandelier or a door.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A group activity in which couples exchange partners for sexual activity, often in a shared setting.

   The documentary explored swinging among middle-aged couples in suburban communities.

   They were curious about swinging but agreed to set clear rules first.

   Note

   The name comes from the dance floor. In swing dancing, partners change after each dance, while traditional ballroom styles keep a single partner throughout. It is used chiefly as a mass noun ("Simon gently suggested swinging"), and it shares its vocabulary with the verb swing in its "wife-swapping" use and with the "promiscuous" adjective.

4. 4
   adjective

   Sexually promiscuous; inclined to have many casual sexual partners.

   The novel's swinging protagonist drifts from one fling to the next.

   Friends teased him about his swinging years before he settled down.

   Similarpromiscuous

   Oppositechaste

5. 5
   adjectivecolloquial

   Fine, good, or successful; lively and exciting.

   The whole festival had a swinging atmosphere from the very first set.

   Business was swinging that summer, with reservations booked weeks ahead.

   Similarlively, vibrant, buzzing, booming

   Oppositedull

   Note

   A lively, informal word that works after a verb as easily as before a noun: the party was swinging. It is also one of the rare -ing adjectives that can take -er and -est. Alongside more swinging and most swinging you will meet swinginger and swingingest, which suit the playful register the word lives in.

6. 6
   adjective

   Alternative form of swingeing. Chiefly British, and much less common than swingeing.

   The government imposed swinging taxes on imported luxury goods.

   Critics condemned the swinging penalties handed down to small businesses.

   Note

   A different word that happens to share the spelling. It is swingeing, meaning "huge" or "heavy, scathing", and it has nothing to do with swaying. In Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749), a landlady reports that a patient "hath devoured two swinging buttered toasts": huge toasts, not moving ones. Writing swingeing with the e keeps the two apart, and the "huge" sense is marked British.

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