Swatting
noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A motion or gesture that swats; a swat.
"This […] evoked a new disorder — a tendency to sudden, tic-like jabbings and swattings in the air, as if she were fending off flies or mosquitoes."
- 2 The action of making an illegitimate call to the police so as to have a SWAT team dispatched to a location. US, slang
"Swatting started in the combative world of online gaming. It was a way to terrorize someone more famous, get even with a rival or retaliate against someone with different political views."
- 1 present participle and gerund of swat form-of, gerund, participle, present
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"In the past few years, warmer temperatures in summer have allowed mosquito populations to explode. So the caribou spend a lot more energy swatting away the mosquitoes. All this swatting leaves the caribou less energy to find food and prepare for the next long winter."
Etymology
From swat + -ing.
More for "swatting"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.