Nude swimming, or skinny dipping, is the practice of bathing naked, originally in natural bodies of water, but also in swimming pools or hot tubs. The term was the practice of being immersed in spring waters, for health reasons at spa towns.
The widespread social convention and practice today is for swimmers especially in public places to wear swimsuits. Most countries do not have specific laws proscribing nude swimming, and the matter is regulated largely by social convention and practice. Nude swimming takes place on nude beaches, or at naturist facilities, segregated public swimming areas or in private swimming pools. Some countries around the world regard nude swimming as public nudity, which is treated in a variety of ways, ranging from tolerance to strict enforcement of prohibitions against it.
The term was first recorded in English in 1947 and is most commonly used in the United States.
Bathing by both sexes together had occurred since time immemorial and is documented in neolithic cave drawings and Roman mosaics and frescos. The woodcut illustrations in Everard Digby's, 1587 book The Art of Swimming (De Arte Natandi) and later, the 40 copperplate etchings in Melchisédech Thévenot's 1789 instruction book, also called The Art of Swimming, illustrate that swimming was normally costume free. When working people started visiting the coast to be 'dipped' for health or to 'bathe' for leisure cannot be determined but had been happening for 'some time' in 1709.
For the common folk, splashing in rivers and swimming was a leisure activity and always done naked by boys and men and often by the women and girls. Bathing in the sea by the lower classes was noted in Southampton by Thomas Gray in 1764, and in Exmouth by shoals of Exeter damsels in unsufferable undress in 1779. Lancashire working people bathed naked in the sea without any segregation in 1795: