Snorkelling is swimming face down with a tube to breathe through. Go snorkelling, a snorkelling trip, snorkelling over the reef.
The tube cannot be much longer than it is, because below about forty centimetres the water pressure makes it too hard to draw breath — which is why a longer snorkel is not an improvement. Sunburn on the back is the standard hazard.
1nounsnorkellingSwimming face down with a tube to breathe through.
“We went snorkelling over the coral reef and saw turtles and bright fish.”
snorkelling is an activity.
Also accepted in games: snorkeling
German
Schnorchel — (submarine) snorkel
English
snorkel
English, today
snorkelling
Built from
snorkel German Schnorchel (“(submarine) snorkel”), related to schnarchen (“to snore”). Thus named because of the submarine snorkel's functional similarity to a nose and because of its noise when in use. The anglicized spelling was first recorded in 1945. See, for example, Mark S. Watson, "New Epoch in Sea War", The Baltimore Sun, December 31, 1945, p. 8: "The Germans' earlier quest of the last important objective, it will be remembered, had produced the Snorkel, a long exhaust tube whose vent reached above water and permitted a submerged vessel to discharge its Diesel fumes in open air."
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA