Glide

How to spell glide

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce glide

What does glide mean?

1. verbTo move smoothly and continuously with little apparent effort.
2. nounA smooth, continuous movement, or a part that slides easily, such as a runner on furniture.

Glide in a sentence

• verb

  The skaters seemed to glide across the frozen lake.

• noun

  A felt glide on each chair leg stops the floor from getting scratched.

• verb

  Trained dancers glide from one pose to the next without a stumble.

• noun

  The dancer finished the routine with a long, effortless glide across the stage.

Where does glide come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Glide is a native English word, descending from the Old English verb glīdan, which meant to move along smoothly, slip, or pass without obvious effort. It belongs to a wide Germanic family, with close relatives such as Dutch glijden and German gleiten, all carrying the same idea of frictionless motion. The word has stayed remarkably stable in sense for over a thousand years, always describing easy, continuous movement rather than jolting or laboured progress. Its spelling is mercifully phonetic: the long 'i' is signalled by the silent final 'e', a pattern that has held since Middle English. From the same instinct for smooth slipping motion English later borrowed the term 'glider' for an engineless aircraft that rides the air.

How the word is built

• glide (single Old English root glīdan: to move smoothly and effortlessly); no prefix or suffix