Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell swam

hear it/swæm/verbSounds

What it means: Moved through water by moving the body.

In a sentence: The duck swam across the pond.

The part people get wrong

Often misspelled as swum or swamm.

Same family: swims, swimming, swum, swimmer. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Swam” is the simple past tense of “swim,” a very old English verb that comes from Proto-Germanic roots meaning ‘to move in water.’ The same ancient root is also related to words in other Germanic languages like German “schwimmen.”

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