Skateboard

How to spell skateboard

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce skateboard

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does skateboard mean?

1. nounA short narrow board mounted on four wheels, ridden by standing on it and pushing along with one foot.
2. verbTo ride on a skateboard.

Skateboard in a sentence

• noun

  He carried his skateboard under one arm on the way to the park.

• verb

  The teenagers like to skateboard down the empty car park ramp after dark.

• noun

  The shop sells every component you need to build a custom skateboard.

• verb

  Local bylaws make it illegal to skateboard across the main shopping square.

Where does skateboard come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

This is a transparent modern compound formed by joining the words 'skate' and 'board'. The first element, 'skate', came into English in the seventeenth century from the Dutch 'schaats', a word for the ice-gliding blade, which itself traces back through Old French 'escache' meaning a stilt or wooden leg. The second element, 'board', is a thoroughly native Germanic word from Old English 'bord', meaning a plank or flat piece of timber. The two were welded together in the United States in the late 1950s, when surfers fixed roller-skate wheels to a wooden plank so they could 'surf' the pavements when the waves were flat. Because both halves are ordinary everyday words, the spelling holds no real trap beyond remembering it is written as a single closed compound.

How the word is built

• skate (to glide)
• board (flat plank)