Translation
to swing, to wave (something); to brandish
Word origin
A Germanic borrowing, from German schwingen and English swing, both from an old root meaning to move to and fro. Esperanto took the consonant cluster sv- straight over, which is unusual: most of the vocabulary comes through Latin or the Romance languages.
- Origin
- Germanic
- Root
- schwingen
- English cognates
- swing, swingle
Examples
.
The children waved their hands at the train.
.
He waved the flag in front of the whole group.
.
She swung the basket as she walked to the village.
is transitive and it wants an object. You swing something: a hand, a flag, a stick, a basket. If the thing is doing the swinging by itself, add -- and say i, which is what a door or a rope does in the wind. This is the standard transitive-intransitive pairing and the pattern is worth internalising once rather than word by word, as igi and iĝi sets out.
Beside it, movi is the general verb for moving something and says nothing about the shape of the motion. is specifically the arc: a repeated to-and-fro, or one big sweep. And tremi is trembling, which is small, involuntary and intransitive.
The most common use by far is waving. is to wave a hand; on its own is understood as waving at somebody. At an Esperanto congress you will see a great many flags svingataj, which is the passive participle doing exactly what you would expect.
Where this fits
Add to review queue
Track this word in your spaced-repetition queue and be tested on it at the right interval.
Go to my review queueEsperanto · Free printables
svingi: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "svingi" (to swing, to wave (something); to brandish): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
Free for members
The printable worksheets, infographics and PDFs are free with an account. Start a free week and download as many as you like.
Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 40.