Other forms: kayaks
A kayak is a slim closed canoe paddled with a double-bladed oar. Paddle a kayak, a sea kayak, kayaking.
The paddler sits with legs forward inside a closed deck, which is what separates it from a canoe, where you kneel and use a single blade. The Eskimo roll — righting a capsized kayak without leaving it — is possible only because the deck is closed. Inuit kayaks were skin over driftwood or bone frames and were built to fit one hunter. Note that kayak is a palindrome, which is nearly always the first thing said about it.
1nounkayakA slim closed canoe paddled with a double-bladed oar.
“We paddled a kayak along the coast and explored the small caves.”
kayak is a small boat.
The word is Inuit qajaq, a hunter's boat, borrowed into English in the seventeenth century. It is one of very few Inuit words in general English use, along with igloo and anorak.
iu
ᖃᔭᖅ
English, today
kayak
Borrowed from iu ᖃᔭᖅ. iu ᖃᔭᖅ (“hunter's boat”) (Inuvialuktunikt), from esx-esk-pro qayaʁ. Compare kl qajaq and esu qayaq.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA