swoop

1. 1.

   move down on as if in an attack

   “The raptor swooped down on its prey”

   “The teacher swooped down upon the new students”

   Synonymspounce

   Broaderdescend

   Narrowerstoop
2. 2.

   move with a sweep, or in a swooping arc

   Broadermove
3. 3.

   seize or catch with a swooping motion

   Synonymsswoop up

   Broadersnatch

Other forms of swoop

plural

swoops·

past tense

swooped·

present participle

swooping·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about swoop

What does swoop mean?

swoop means "(music) rapid sliding up or down the musical scale". That is the primary sense; the word has 6 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in swoop?

swoop has 1 syllable: swoop. In IPA it is /ˈswup/.

What is another word for swoop?

Close synonyms include slide, pounce, swoop up. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is swoop a common word?

swoop is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.