Other forms: somersaults
A somersault is a complete roll of the body head over heels. Turn a somersault, a forward somersault, somersaults in the air.
It is a rotation about the horizontal axis, which is what distinguishes it from a cartwheel sideways or a twist about the long axis. Divers and gymnasts count them in halves. Note the spelling, which people expect to contain summer; and that the word means over-leap, from Latin supra and saltus.
1nounsomersaultA complete roll of the body head over heels.
“The gymnast did a perfect somersault and landed on her feet.”
somersault is an acrobatic move.
Old Occitan sobresalt is sobre, over, plus salt, a jump, from Latin supra and saltus. Summer has nothing to do with it.
Proto-Indo-European
*sel-
Latin
suprā — over
Old Occitan
sobresalt
French
sombresault
English, today
somersault
Built from
From French sombresault (now obsolete, compare French sursaut, soubresaut), from Old Occitan sobresalt, from sobre- (“over, above”) + salt (“jump”), from Latin suprā (“over”) + saltus (“jump”). a doublet of soubresaut. Cognate with Spanish sobresaltar (“to spook, startle”) and Portuguese sobressaltar (“to spook, scare, jump over”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA