Other forms: skids, skidded, skidding
To skid is to slide with no grip and no control, the way a car does on ice. Braking too hard on a wet road and feeling the back end go, a bike sliding out on wet leaves, tyres skidding on gravel at the end of a drive.
It works for anything that loses its footing: a shoe skids on a polished floor, a plate skids across a table. The noun is the same word — the car went into a skid — and skid marks are the black lines left burnt onto the road. A skid is also a plank or runner that something slides or rests on, which is why a helicopter lands on skids instead of wheels. And when a business or a career hits the skids, it has started going badly wrong.
1verbskidTo slide sideways or forward without grip, out of control.
“The van skidded on the wet leaves and hit the kerb.”
2nouninstanceAn instance of sliding out of control.
“He came out of the skid without touching anything.”
3nounplankA plank or runner that something rests or slides on.
“The helicopter settled onto its skids in the wet field.”
Skid and ski are the same word. Both come from Old Norse skid, a billet of wood — a beam or plank that something rests on — and behind that sits a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to split, divide or separate, because a plank is split wood. The plank a load slid across gave us the skid; a plank strapped to each foot gave us the ski.
Proto-Indo-European
*skey-
Proto-Indo-European
*skey-t-
Proto-Germanic
*skīdą — log, clapboard
Old Norse
skíð — a billet of wood, a beam or plank on which something rests
Middle English
*skid
English, today
skid
Built from
From Middle English skid, from Old Norse skíð (“a billet of wood, a beam or plank on which something rests”), from Proto-Germanic skīdą (“log, clapboard”), from Proto-Indo-European skey-t-, skey- (“to split, divide, separate”). Cognate with English shide, from Middle English schyd, schyde, schide (“plank, beam”), German Scheit (“piece of wood, log”). a doublet of ski.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Travel & Transport, Ways of Moving