swing: [OE] Swing goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Germanic base *swinggw-, which denoted ‘violent circulatory movement’. One of its specific applications was to the wielding of a whip, and indeed the English verb swing originally meant ‘flog’ (‘They bind him and swing him and spit on his face’, Blickling Homilies 971). Another Old English sense was ‘rush’, but the main modern meaning ‘oscillate’ did not emerge until as recently as the 16th century. The ancestral notion of ‘flogging’ or ‘beating’ is better preserved in the related swinge [16]. => swinge
