What does a dream about water mean - drowning or swimming?

A dream dictionary is basically fortune-telling, so there's no one universal answer. It all depends on the context and what you actually felt in the dream. If you were drowning and felt panic, it might reflect a sense of helplessness in real life, when some situation spins out of control. But if you were swimming calmly or even diving with pleasure - that's usually interpreted as a positive sign, a symbol of harmony or moving forward.

But honestly, what matters most is your own associations. Like, I had a bunch of nightmares about water as a kid, and later when I started spending more time at the lake, the dreams changed just because water stopped being something scary and unknown. Try to remember what exactly you dreamed: what the water was like, cold or warm, whether there was panic or calm, whether someone was nearby. Often a dream isn't really about water as a symbol at all - it's about the emotion that came up in it.

If you keep having drowning dreams repeatedly and they're really bothering you - maybe it's worth just talking to someone you trust. Sometimes that helps more than searching for meanings in dream dictionaries.