Other forms: hiking, hikes, hiked
To hike is to walk a long way over rough country. Hike in the hills, go hiking, a five-hour hike.
It implies distance, effort and boots. Hiking is the general activity, hiker the person, and hiking boots and hiking trail the standard compounds. Ramble is the older British word for much the same thing. There is a second sense entirely about money: a hike is a sharp increase — a price hike, an interest rate hike — which is now the commonest use in news writing. Note hike up, meaning to pull upward.
1verbhikeTo walk a long way over rough country.
“They hiked about eleven miles and got lost twice.”
2nounsharpA sharp increase in a price or rate.
“The rent hike drove half the tenants out.”
hike is a long walk, or a sharp rise.
The word appeared in nineteenth-century English dialect and its origin is unknown. The price sense came from American usage, where to hike something up meant to pull it up sharply.
Middle English
hytchen
English, today
hike
Built from
From English dialectal hyke (“to walk vigorously”), probably a Northern form of hitch, from Middle English hytchen, hichen, icchen (“to move, jerk, stir”). Cognate with Scots hyke (“to move with a jerk”), dialectal German hicken (“to hobble, walk with a limp”), Danish hinke (“to hop”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA