skate

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to move over ice or a hard surface wearing skates

   The Dutch often skate along the frozen canals in winter.

2. 2
   noun

   a boot with a blade or wheels attached, used for gliding over ice or ground

   She laced up her skates and stepped onto the ice.

3. 3
   noun

   a period or act of skating

   The boys had a skate every morning when the lake was frozen.

Multiword verbs with skate

• skate over Prepositional verb A2

  to deal with a difficult subject briefly without examining it properly

Appears in

Simplified etymology

The ice-skating noun was originally written scates, from Dutch schaats. Although schaats was singular, English speakers interpreted it as plural; it ultimately comes from Old French eschasse, “stilt,” through an unexplained change in meaning. The unrelated fish name dates from Middle English and comes from Old Norse.

Back-formation from Dutch schaats, from Middle Dutch schāetse, from Old Northern French escache (“a stilt, trestle”) (compare French échasse and English scatch), from a Germanic language, perhaps Frankish *skakkjā (“stilt”, literally “thing that moves”), related to *skakan (“to shake, swing”).

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary