Hike

How to spell hike

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hike

What does hike mean?

1. verbTo go for a long, vigorous walk, especially in the countryside or hills.
2. nounA long walk taken for exercise or pleasure, usually over natural terrain.
3. nounA sharp rise in something, especially a price, charge, or rate.

Hike in a sentence

• verb

  We plan to hike up the mountain trail before lunch.

• noun

  The morning hike left everyone pleasantly tired.

• noun

  The sudden hike in rent forced them to move.

• verb

  They like to hike along the coastal path every weekend.

• noun

  She packed sandwiches for the day-long hike in the hills.

• noun

  Commuters were angry about the latest fare hike.

Where does hike come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

Hike is a relatively young English word whose deeper origin is genuinely murky. It surfaced in the early nineteenth century, apparently as a dialect term from southern and western England, where it meant to walk vigorously or to tramp across rough ground. Some scholars connect it to an older verb 'hyke' or to 'hitch', in the sense of pulling or jerking something up, which would tie in neatly with the later financial meaning of hiking a price 'up'. Because the trail back into earlier English is so faint, dictionaries usually label its origin uncertain rather than risk a tidy but false story. Happily for the speller, the word is short and phonetic: the silent 'e' simply lengthens the 'i', as in 'bike' and 'like', so the only thing to remember is that final 'e'.

How the word is built

• hike (single root, no affixes)