Sway

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /sweɪ/

Definitions

1. To move or swing gently from side to side ; to have an effect on someone's thoughts, feelings, or decisions
2. To cause to rock or oscillate smoothly in a rhythmic manner ; to hold power to affect or change someone's judgment or behavior
3. To incline or sway from a fixed point with a steady motion ; to possess the ability to guide or determine outcomes by persuasion or authority

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "sway" is that its earliest sense was closer to falling than to swinging. Its ancestor, Old English "swǣġan", meant "to bend" or "bow", and in Middle English it came to mean "to fall" or "swoon", the sense of giving way under weight or dizziness. Only later did it settle into the idea of a slow, rhythmic movement from side to side. The word belongs to a family of Germanic and Indo-European forms with a shared notion of bending, bowing, or becoming giddy. Its cousins include Saterland Frisian "swooie", meaning to swing or wobble, and Lithuanian "svaigti", meaning to become dizzy. The sense of swaying as a wobbling, unsteady motion is therefore an old one, and the notion of being unbalanced sits at the heart of the word. Alongside the verb, English also developed a noun from it, so the same root gives both the act of swaying and the thing that sways, such as a person's authority or influence. In that sense, "sway" moved from a physical lurch to a metaphor for power over others.

Synonyms: rock, swing, oscillate, waver, fluctuate

Antonyms: steady, stabilize, remain, persist, stay