parkour

UK/pɑːˈkʊə/US/pɑɹˈkʊɹ/

nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Parkour is moving fast through a city by vaulting and climbing. Practise parkour.

It came out of French military obstacle training and became a discipline of its own. Parkour is about efficiency rather than tricks, which is what separates it from freerunning.

Definitions of parkour

1nounparkourMoving fast through a city by vaulting and climbing.B2
“Parkour taught him more about landing than any sport had.”

parkour is a discipline.

Where it comes from

French parkour is an altered spelling of parcours, a route or course, from a military obstacle course.

Proto-Indo-European
*ḱers-
French
parkour
English, today
parkour

Built from

parcours · French — course, route

French parkour, altered spelling of parcours (“course, route”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sports & Games Played

Practise this word

parkour in the wild

With roots in military obstacle course training and martial arts, parkour includes flipping, running, climbing, swinging, vaulting, jumping, plyometrics, rolling, and whatever is suitable for a given situation.
Parkour
However, as the parkour culture evolved, its distinction from freerunning became increasingly blurred.
Parkour
Jump London is a documentary first broadcast by Channel 4 about parkour and free running in September 2003, directed by Mike Christie and produced by Optomen Television.
Jump London
The Yamakasi are the original group of l'art du deplacement (parkour) practitioners from Lisses, France.
Yamakasi
The name has been used in popular references to parkour, including in French films about admirable lawbreakers who do their physically demanding deeds for charitable ends.
Yamakasi

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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