Meaning: swim

Illustrative Context

He is swimming in the lake.

Target Sense

• The most generic term for swim as an intransitive verb, in the prototypical context of a human swimming in the water of a lake or river.
• Avoid other lexemes applicable to people in water but which do not meet the prototypical criteria for swimming, as relatively demanding of muscular effort, in order move through water. That is, avoid terms with different meanings, such as:
  • bathe (or French se baigner) for generally just ‘being in water’
  • float, i.e. without muscular effort
  • tread water, i.e. with muscular effort, but without moving through water
  • wade, i.e. advancing through water, but largely by walking through it, with one’s feet on the bottom.
• Enter the default lexeme in the basic vocabulary, for the action in general. Avoid narrower terms that focus on particular purposes in swimming, e.g. as a recreational or sporting activity (i.e. ‘going for a swim’), or to wash, or to avoid drowning.
• Although the target sense includes specifically moving through water, enter the most generic, basic lexeme, which should not be explicitly directional. The default lexeme will therefore typically be a bare root without additional directional morphemes (e.g. equivalent to English across, over, away, up, etc.). On this, see also the definitions for the separate IE-CoR definitions for other motion verbs such as go and fly.
• Some languages do not have a dedicated simplex verb root equivalent to English swim. In such cases, the basic lexeme to enter for this meaning is whatever periphrastic expression corresponds most closely, which may be a weak verb, adverbial phrase, etc., and may be literally equivalent to go in water. See also the similar issue in the definition for the separate IE-CoR meaning walk.
• The basic target sense is for swimming by people, although in many languages the preferred generic word may, as with English swim, be applicable to animals too, including fish and other aquatic animals. This is not in itself a concern, provided that the lexeme entered is the default word for the target sense here, i.e. as applied to humans swimming. Avoid terms specific to swimming by animals, however, which are not the default word for humans.
• Similarly, in some languages the same lexeme may even be applicable to boats, i.e. equivalent to the English verb sail, as in Russian плавать (на лодке), plavat’ na lodke. But again, certainly do not include additional lexemes specifically applicable to boats, i.e. avoid all terms like sail.