4 folds?

[Yourjones]

Hello,

If a swimming pool is 50 metres long. I swam from one end to the other, flipped over, and swam all the way back. Thus I made 100 metres.

I did the above 4 times so I made 400 metres.

Can I say I swam four rounds in the swimming pool? Or 4 folds? Or I swam to and from for 4 times?

Thanks.

 

[MikeNewYork]

I would say 8 laps.

 

[Yourjones]

Thank you so much! When we describe a bus shuttling between two stations, can we also say it did 8 laps?

 

[Matthew Wai]

The Longman dictionary says a lap means 'a single journey around a race track' which may be inapplicable to a bus route.

Not a teacher.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

No. Laps are for athletes. Swimmers swim laps. runners run laps. A lap is one full circuit back to the starting place. You swam four laps.

Buses are not athletes. You could say that it drove its route four times. Or went back and forth four times. Or did four runs.

 

[Rover_KE]

In my experience, most BE speakers don't say swimmers swim laps — they swim lengths.

Very few dictionaries here define a lap as the length of a swimming pool.

 

[Barb_D]

Four laps is eight lengths.
We do refer to swimming laps here.

 

[Tdol]

What do you say if you swim across the pool? In BrE, we do widths.

 

[Rover_KE]

...or breadths.

 

[Barb_D]

If you are referring to swimming for exercise, you'd say something like "I'm going to go to the Y and swim a few laps."

If your child is a new swimmer, you could encourage her or him to see if they could swim the entire width of the pool. Or the entire length.

 

[MikeNewYork]

In my usage, each length of the pool is a lap.

See definition 2, noun, definition 2b here: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lap

 

[Tdol]

Lazy. :-D

 

[Barb_D]

As someone who comes from a family of swimmers, a lap is "there and back" not just "there." How could one-way motion be a "circuit"?

But unless you are doing a specific workout, it really doesn't matter.