Other forms: skiing, skis, skied
To ski is to travel over snow on two long narrow runners. Learn to ski, ski down the slope, ski all day.
It works the same way a sled does — pressure melts a thin film of water and the ski slides on that — and wax is chosen to match the snow temperature. Skiing began as transport in Norway, and the word is Norwegian for a stick of wood.
1verbskiTo travel over snow on two long narrow runners.
“We learned to ski on the gentle slopes near the village.”
ski is a way of travelling.
Norwegian ski comes from Old Norse skid, a stick of wood or a snowshoe, from a root meaning to split.
Proto-Indo-European
*skey- — to cut, split
Proto-Germanic
*skīdą — stick
Old Norse
skíð — stick of wood, snowshoe
English, today
ski
From Norwegian - ski, from Old Norse skíð (“stick of wood, snowshoe”), from Proto-Germanic skīdą (“stick”), from Proto-Indo-European skey- (“to cut, split”) (see also shed). Cognate with Old English sċīd (“stick of wood”) (modern a doublet of shide), Old High German skit (Modern German Scheit (“log”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA