dog paddle

plural dog paddles · alternative doggy paddle · alternative dogpaddle · alternative dog-paddle

1. A swimming stroke in the style of a dog swimming.

   He would still go down for his daily dog paddle in the faculty swimming pool, and would still nibble the raisins he likes to keep in his briefcase.

   1949 April 23, “Exit Growling”, in Time

   1 more example

   The self-taught small boy usually begins with the so-called “dog-paddle.” There his instinct is thoroughly right, and the method is especially valuable for children too young to do much formal practicing. Dog-paddle is the most natural of all strokes, and therefore the easiest of all to learn.

   1908 April, Edwin T. Brewster, “The Bathtub Swimming School”, in Good Housekeeping, volume 46, page 387

present singular third person dog paddles · participle present dog paddling · participle past dog paddled · past dog paddled · alternative doggy paddle · alternative dogpaddle · alternative dog-paddle

1. To swim in dog paddle style.

   He pretended that an alligator was behind him and swam desperately. He passed one spot and then, laboriously, another, dog-paddling.

   1938, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, chapter 11, in The Yearling

   2 more examples

   Last week, as the latest escapee dog paddled his way to freedom across the Spandau ship canal, the Grepos machine-pistoled him down with seven slugs. Sinking in mid stream, he became the 58th victim—and the first dog—to die since 1961 while trying to enter West Berlin from the East German democratic workers’ paradise.

   1965 April 23, “Dream of a Bigger Bone”, in Time

   They were of course distantly related to Eliza and me, too, since our Vermont ancestors had once been content to dogpaddle endlessly, so to speak, in the same tiny genetic pool.

   1976, Kurt Vonnegut, chapter 2, in Slapstick, Delacorte Press, page 31