[f. as prec. + -ING2.] That swings.
1. Moving to and fro as or like a suspended body; oscillating; swaying.
a. 1560. Phaër, Æneid, X. (1562), Dd iv b. He swam with swinging sides.
1716. Gay, Trivia, I. 157. But when the swinging signs your ears offend With creaking noise, then rainy floods impend.
1803. Scott, Cadyow Castle, xi. The drawbridge falls—… Clatters each plank and swinging chain.
1815. Shelley, Alastor, 563. A pine … stretched athwart the vacancy Its swinging boughs.
1833. Loudon, Encycl. Archit., § 662. Swinging cribs and cradles are now justly exploded.
1848. Lytton, K. Arthur, V. xcix. With lifted cross and swinging censer.
1900. Conan Doyle, Green Flag, etc., 127. He punched the swinging ball and worked with the dumb-bells.
fig. 1915. J. Kelman, Salted with Fire, xii. 180. The devious and swinging balance of power with which diplomacy has hitherto concerned itself.
b. Of a blow: Characterized or accompanied by a swing of the arm, etc.
1850. Holtzapffel, Turning, III. 1190. The toothed saws for stone are used with a swinging stroke.
1898. ‘H. S. Merriman,’ Roden’s Corner, xxx. 320. Von Holzen ran at him with his arm outstretched for a swinging stab.
1902. S. E. White, Blazed Trail, I. vi. He saw his opening and let out with a swinging pivot blow.
2. Turning or adapted to turn freely in either direction upon a fixed axis or center, as a gate or door, a hinged piece of mechanism, etc.; in technical use = SWING- (see also 4).
1730. Inv. D. Bond’s Goods (1732), 34. A square Walnut-tree Table and Swinging Glass.
1868. Rep. to Govt. U.S. Munitions War, 51. Mr. Joslyn’s rifle, calibre 0·500, has a swinging breech-piece of a peculiar pattern.
1885. Mabel Collins, Prettiest Woman, x. He opened the swinging door for her.
1879. Man. Artill. Exerc., 71. The butt of the swinging derrick is made fast to the upright spar.
1904. Windsor Mag., Jan., 300/2. The girl turned about on the swinging stool where she sat.
3. Applied to a steady vigorous rhythmical onward movement (pace, step, etc.) accompanied, or such as is commonly accompanied by a swaying from side to side; hence used of a rhythm in verse or music suggesting such a movement.
1818. Scott, Br. Lamm., xxii. Onward they came at a long swinging trot.
1881. Fenn, Off to Wilds, viii. The boy pressed his horse’s sides, and went off at a swinging canter.
1884. J. G. Rogers, in Congregationalist, Feb., 104. These swinging congregational melodies.
1887. Westm. Rev., June, 380. A long swinging dactylic measure in rhyming couplets.
1902. J. Buchan, Watcher by Threshold, 76. I heard a long swinging step outside.
4. Special collocations or combinations: swinging-bar = swing-bar (SWING- 2); swinging-boom Naut., a boom swung or suspended over the ship’s side, used to stretch the foot of a lower studding-sail, and (when at anchor) for a boat to ride by; swinging-bridge, (a) see quot. 1892; (b) = swing-bridge (SWING- 2); swinging-tree dial. = SWINGLETREE.
1859. Jephson, Brittany, xi. 188. To the end of the pole is attached a *swinging-bar and a pair of traces for a leader.
1840. R. H. Dana, Bef. Mast, xi. Bracing the yards forward so that the *swinging-boom nearly touched the sprit-sail yard.
1892. Philips, Fortification, 244. Flying or *Swinging Bridges.—A flying bridge is one in which the action of the current is made to move a boat, or raft of two piers, across a stream, by acting obliquely against its side.
1908. Westm. Gaz., 23 Nov., 5/3. The city of Cleveland, Ohio,… desired to convert the viaduct-bridge over the Cuyahoga River into a swinging-bridge.
Hence Swingingly adv., with swinging movement.
1856. John Inly, in Tri-Weekly Commercial (Wilmington, NC), 14 Oct., 1/1. She walked—if one could call her graceful motions walking—along by my side, carrying her straw hat swingingly in her hand.
1882. ‘Annie Thomas,’ Allerton Towers, II. vi. 105. A long, lithe, lean-headed mare, with a sweeping stride, and with action so swingingly easy, so faultlessly true to time, that her rider never swerves by a hair’s-breadth in the saddle, whatever the pace may be.
1895. Murray’s Mag., X. 662. To strut swingingly up the Cathedral to the Dean’s pew.
