Hurdles

How to spell hurdles

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hurdles

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hurdles mean?

1. nounUpright barriers that athletes jump over during a running race.
2. nounDifficulties or obstacles that must be overcome to make progress.
3. verbJumps over a barrier while running, as a third-person action.

Hurdles in a sentence

• noun

  The sprinters cleared all ten hurdles without breaking stride.

• noun

  The loan application involved several bureaucratic hurdles.

• verb

  He hurdles each fence cleanly on his morning run.

• noun

  The groundskeeper set out the hurdles before the athletics meeting.

• noun

  The project faced funding hurdles in its first year.

• verb

  The lead runner hurdles the final barrier and surges ahead.

Where does hurdles come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English hyrdel, which described a light, portable frame of interwoven twigs or wattle used to make temporary fences and animal pens. It belongs to the same West Germanic family as the Dutch horde and the German Hurde, all going back to a root meaning a plaited or woven frame, and it is distantly related to the idea of weaving and twisting. For centuries a hurdle was a literal farming object: a movable wooden barrier, and condemned prisoners were once dragged to execution lashed to one. The athletics sense, a barrier that runners leap over, grew out of this in the 1800s, since early race obstacles were simply farm hurdles set up on a track. From there the figurative sense of a hurdle as any obstacle or difficulty to overcome became common. The silent-looking stretch -urdle keeps the original Old English shape, which is the part that trips writers expecting a more phonetic spelling.

How the word is built

• hurdle (portable frame, barrier)
• -s (plural / third-person verb ending)