You can start from the broom. A person sweeping does not pick things up one at a time; they swing the brush in a long arc and take a whole strip of floor with it in a single pass. Hold that one movement in mind, because every other use of the word is somewhere inside it. It is wide — one pass covers a lot of ground. It is smooth — the brush does not stop and start. It is curved — the arm draws an arc. And it is — dust, and a coin you wanted all go into the same pile. Different senses of sweeping pick up different parts of that stroke.
From the word’s history
The Wiktionary evidence analyses the word simply as sweep + -ing, so the connection to the broom is not a guess but the make-up of the word itself.
所附的維基詞典把這個字直接拆成 sweep + -ing。所以「掃把」的畫面不是猜的，就是這個字的組成本身。
Wiktionary entries supplied in this evidence packet (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:1043715798 and :1043722572): "By surface analysis, sweep + -ing."
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料6 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
sweepingnoun/ˈswiːpɪŋ/
- 1
An instance of sweeping.
- The sidewalk needed a sweeping every morning.
- 2
The activity of sweeping.
- Sweeping took all morning.
- The sidewalk needed sweeping every morning.
sweepingadj/ˈswiːpɪŋ/
- 1
Wide, broad, affecting or touching upon many things.
- The government will bring in sweeping changes to the income tax system.
- He loves making sweeping statements without the slightest evidence.
- 2
Completely overwhelming.
- He claimed a sweeping victory.
- 3
Moving in a continuous motion, rather than by intermittent jumps. (For example, the second hand on a clock face may move either in the sweeping manner or in the ticking manner.)
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。