Word.ws English Dictionary

swinging the lead

swinging the lead is the present participle and gerund of swing the lead.

Meaning of swing the lead

Verb

swing the lead (third-person singular simple present swings the lead, present participle swinging the lead, simple past and past participle swung the lead)

  1. (intransitive) To avoid work, especially by pretending to be ill; to shirk, to malinger.
    • Though he was by no means inclined to help carry a gas-cylinder on a pole, while watching the working party fall in on the road that night, Bourne felt rather out of it; he felt as though he were swinging the lead.1929, Frederic Manning, The Middle Parts of Fortune, Vintage, published 2014, page 93

Questions about swinging the lead

What is swinging the lead the present participle and gerund of?
Swinging the lead is the present participle and gerund of swing the lead.

Words near swinging the lead in the dictionary

  1. swinging post
  2. swinging posts
  3. swinging round the circle
  4. swinging sixties
  5. swinging that way
  6. swinging the lead
  7. swinging through
  8. swinging-block
  9. swinging-blocks
  10. swinging-door chad
  11. swinging-door chads

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: swinging the lead (page history and authors); swing the lead (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “swinging the lead.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/swinging_the_lead. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.