A luge is a one-person sled ridden feet-first down an ice track. Ride the luge, a luge run, the luge final.
The rider lies on the back, feet first, and steers by pressing with the legs and shoulders — there are no brakes at all. Speeds pass a hundred and forty kilometres an hour, which makes it the fastest sport on ice.
1nounlugeA one-person sled ridden feet-first down an ice track.
“She lay flat on her back on the luge and shot down the icy track.”
luge is a sled.
A Swiss French dialect word, from a Latin word of Celtic origin for a sledge.
Proto-Indo-European
*sleydʰ-
Proto-Indo-European
*h₃sleydʰ- — to slide, slip; to be slick or slippery
cel-gau
*stludio
Latin
sclodia
Medieval Latin
scludia
frp
luge
English, today
luge
The noun is borrowed from fr-CH - or frp luge, from Medieval Latin scludia, from Latin sclodia, of cel - origin, from cel-gau stludio, possibly from Proto-Indo-European h₃sleydʰ- (“to slide, slip; to be slick or slippery”). If so, it is related to a doublet of sled and sleigh. Sense 2.2 (“drinking utensil”) is from its resemblance to the tracks on which luges race. The verb is derived from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA