swum
- 1Past participle of swim.
The rescuers had swum out to the capsized boat before help arrived.
She had never swum in such cold water before that morning.
Note
The third part of the swim, swam, swum pattern, the form that follows an auxiliary. With have it builds the perfect: had swum, will have swum. With be it makes a passive, which works only for the transitive uses, so a strait, a length or a race can be swum. The simple past belongs to swam, so had swam is the classic slip. After any auxiliary, the -um form is the one to use.
The strait has been swum by only a handful of people.
By noon she had swum three lengths of the lake.
- 2Simple past of swim. Archaic or dialectal; the usual past tense is swam.
He swum the river in flood, though the elders warned him against it.
They swum back to shore as the storm clouds gathered overhead.
Note
Older and regional speech lets the participle do the past tense's work as well, as in he swum the river. You will meet it in older texts and in writing that renders dialect, where it marks a speaker's voice. In standard English it reads as an error. Outside quoted or characterized speech, write swam and leave this form to the past participle.
swum is a form of swim
swim, verb: To move through water by propelling oneself with the arms, legs, or fins, without touching the bottom. Full entry
- Spelling
- swim → swum: irregular (no -ed)
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