Skiing

How to spell skiing

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce skiing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does skiing mean?

1. verbThe activity of travelling over snow on a pair of long narrow runners attached to the feet.

Skiing in a sentence

• The family booked a week of skiing in the Alps.

• She injured her knee while skiing down a steep slope.

Where does skiing come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word traces back to the Old Norse skíð, which literally meant a split piece of wood, a billet, or a long wooden snowshoe. The noun and verb 'ski' entered English in the mid-1800s by way of Norwegian, where the sport of gliding over snow on long wooden runners was already well established. English simply added the ordinary present-participle ending '-ing', and because the base already ends in 'i', the result is the unusual double 'i' that trips so many writers. The same Old Norse root survives in related Scandinavian words for thin boards and shingles, all carrying the sense of something split lengthwise from a log. The spelling trap is purely visual: 'ski' plus '-ing' genuinely produces 'skiing' with two i's in a row, even though the eye expects only one.

How the word is built

• ski (from Old Norse skíð: split length of wood)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)