Word.ws English Dictionary

sunk or swum

sunk or swum is the past participle of sink or swim.

Meaning of sink or swim

Verb

sink or swim (third-person singular simple present sinks or swims, present participle sinking or swimming, simple past sank or swam, past participle sunk or swum)

  1. (idiomatic) To succeed through one's own efforts without support, or else fail completely.
    • "No matter, we are going, live or die, sink or swim; and I shall expect to meet you, all booted and spurred and fit for the fight, April first," said the unwavering Amanda.1872, Louisa May Alcott, chapter 1, in Shawl-Straps

Questions about sunk or swum

What is sunk or swum the past participle of?
Sunk or swum is the past participle of sink or swim.

Words near sunk or swum in the dictionary

  1. sunk costs fallacies
  2. sunk costs fallacy
  3. sunk fence
  4. sunk fences
  5. sunk in
  6. sunk or swum
  7. sunk up
  8. Sunkara
  9. Sunkaras
  10. sunken
  11. sunken featured building

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sunk or swum (page history and authors); sink or swim (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “sunk or swum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sunk_or_swum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.