Skating

How to spell skating

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce skating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does skating mean?

1. nounThe activity of moving over ice or a smooth surface on skates.
2. verbPresent participle of skate: moving along on skates.

Skating in a sentence

• noun

  The frozen pond was perfect for skating all weekend.

• verb

  The children were skating across the rink when the music started.

• noun

  She took up skating to keep fit during the winter months.

• verb

  He kept skating in slow circles while he waited for his friends.

Where does skating come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The base verb skate entered English in the 1600s from the Dutch word schaats, meaning an ice skate; the Dutch itself goes back through Old North French escache, a word for a stilt or wooden leg, and ultimately to a Germanic root for a long shank or shaft. Because schaats already ended in an s sound, early English speakers misheard it as a plural and wrongly formed a new singular, scate or skate, for a single blade. The pastime of gliding over frozen Dutch canals made the word fashionable in Britain after the Restoration. From the verb came the simple -ing form skating, which has since broadened from ice to roller skates, inline skates, and skateboards. The spelling trap lies entirely in the suffix: the silent e of skate is dropped before -ing, so it is skating and never skateing.

How the word is built

• skate (to glide on skates)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix); the silent -e of skate is dropped before -ing