Canoe
nounA narrow, lightweight boat pointed at both ends and propelled with a paddle.
How to spell canoe
5 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce canoe
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does canoe mean?
- nounA narrow, lightweight boat pointed at both ends and propelled with a paddle.
- verbTo travel or paddle in a canoe.
Canoe in a sentence
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noun
They loaded the canoe onto the roof of the car for the weekend trip.
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verb
Every summer they canoe along the quiet river near the campsite.
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noun
A single canoe glided silently across the still lake at dawn.
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verb
The guide taught the group how to canoe in a straight line.
Where does canoe come from?
Language of origin: Spanish
The word canoe traces back to the Taino language of the Caribbean, where 'canaoua' named the dugout boats that Arawak peoples carved from single tree trunks. When Christopher Columbus and his crews reached the West Indies in the 1490s, they recorded the local term, and Spanish adopted it as 'canoa'. English borrowed the Spanish form in the 1500s, at first spelling it in several ways, including 'canoa' and 'cano', before the French-influenced ending 'canoe' settled into place by the 1700s. That unusual '-oe' ending is exactly what trips writers up today, since the word sounds as though it should end in a simpler 'oo'. It is one of a small handful of common English words preserving a Native American root carried into Europe through Spanish exploration.
How the word is built
- canoe (single root, borrowed whole from Spanish canoa; no native prefix or suffix)
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