Skateboarding

How to spell skateboarding

13 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce skateboarding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does skateboarding mean?

1. nounThe activity or sport of riding and performing tricks on a skateboard.

Skateboarding in a sentence

• The council built a new park for skateboarding near the river.

• He took up skateboarding as a teenager and still practises tricks at thirty.

Where does skateboarding come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

This word is a modern compound built from two older parts. 'Skate' came into English in the seventeenth century from the Dutch 'schaats', a word for the bladed footwear used to glide across ice; the Dutch term itself traces back through Old French 'eschasse' meaning a stilt or wooden leg. 'Board' is a thoroughly native word, descending from the Old English 'bord', meaning a plank or flat piece of timber, with relatives across the Germanic languages. The two were joined in mid twentieth century California, where surfers wanting to ride when the waves were flat fixed roller-skate wheels to a wooden board, producing the 'skateboard' around the 1960s. The activity that followed naturally took the gerund form 'skateboarding'. Because both halves are familiar everyday words, the spelling is logical once you remember it is simply skate plus board plus the ordinary -ing ending.

How the word is built

• skate (to glide)
• board (flat plank)
• -ing (gerund/activity suffix)