Swimmingly - a podcast by Word of the Day

Swimmingly is an adverb that means smoothly or without problems. 

The Dutch word zvem (ZVEM) is where we get swim from, but how do we get from that to a synonym of smoothly? Swimming suggests gliding motions and that suggests smooth or without problems. 

Everything was going swimmingly with our experiment until the beaker exploded. After that, we had some serious problems.

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