Trricks of the trade

It is also callaed swabbing. You just search 'swabbing the floor' and you will get the real meaning.

@allknowing @sishy7 i think i've read 'swab the deck' in pirate ships

Mopping (to me, at least) implies a mostly dry process. Swabbing usually means that a certain amount of free liquid is involved. I think I might have said 'washing' the floor to describe the process here but 'swabbing' is also perfectly acceptable, in British English, at least. In my locality, a 'mop' is usually an absorbent bundle of fibres on a handle, very often moistened with oil, with which one cleans dust and dirt from (mostly) floors. It sometimes describes much the same thing but wetted with water. A dish-mop is a smaller utensil used for cleaning dishes (usually a wet process). In that case it may be a bundle of strips of rag or cotton or a synthetic sponge. To 'mop up' something means usually to soak up liquid using a mop or some other absorbent material. To 'swab' generally means to apply liquid to something in order to dissolve or dilute it and then to absorb the resultant solution with a mop (or swab). It can be used in a medical sense or in a general cleaning sense.

Although a mop is used we still refer to it as swabbing. Mopping is something that has been introduced here not so long ago.