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skate

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English has three words spelled skate: the fish, the device for gliding on ice, and a slang word for a worn-out horse or a mean person.[1][2][3]

Pronunciation

skate1 fish

Etymology

The fish is inherited from Middle English scate,[2][5] borrowed from Old Norse skata,[3][6][2][7][8] a word that survives in Norwegian and Icelandic.[3] Barnhart and Etymonline compare Danish skade and Faroese skøta.[7][6] The Old Norse word is of unknown or uncertain origin.[6][9][10] Weekley also compares the Jutland form ska.[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

A large flat cartilaginous fish of the ray family: about 1340, in the account rolls of Durham Abbey;[3] Barnhart has the form schat from about 1340 and scate from about 1375, and the surname Scate as early as 1202.[7]

Semantic evolution

The name was used especially for the common European skate, a large species much eaten as food,[3][12] and later for related rays, often with a distinguishing word (1611).[3] Etymonline quotes the Century Dictionary: all skates are rays, but not all rays are called skates.[6] In Scottish and northern English dialect the fish gave compounds such as skate-bree, the water a skate has been boiled in, and skate-rumple, its hinder part, also used figuratively for a thin, awkward-looking person.[13] Johnson (1755) defined it simply as a flat sea fish.[14]

Timeline

  • 1202 – the surname Scate.[7]
  • c1340 – the fish.[3][7]
  • 1611 – with distinguishing adjectives.[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A large, flat ray with a diamond-shaped body and a long thin tail, or its flesh as food: They had skate wing with capers for supper.

skate2 device for gliding

Etymology

The device for gliding on ice is borrowed from Dutch schaats (“skate; stilt”), whose final -s was taken in English for a plural ending, so that the singular skate was formed from the plural scates.[3][6][7][8][9] The Dutch word continues schaetse (“stilt”),[6][7][2] from Old French escache (“stilt, trestle”), a northern variant of eschace (“stilt”) (modern échasse).[7][8][12][6] The OED notes that the change of meaning from "stilt" to "skate" in Dutch has not been clearly traced.[3][15] The French word is probably Germanic: Barnhart and Etymonline take it from Frankish *skakkja (“stilt”), perhaps "a thing that shakes", related to the root of shake;[7][6][2] Klein and Weekley instead relate it to Middle Low German schenke (“leg”) and Old English scanca (“leg”), the source of shank,[9][11] since the earliest skates were made from the shank bones of animals.[11][6] The same northern French word gave the obsolete scatch (“a stilt”).[3][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

A device fixed to the boot for gliding over ice: 1662, as skeates, in Pepys's Diary;[16][3] Etymonline dates it to the 1660s,[6] the Shorter Oxford to the mid-17th century,[12] and Merriam-Webster to 1684.[2] According to Etymonline, the word and the pastime were brought to England after the Restoration by followers of Charles II who had been in exile in Holland.[6] An older English name for an ice skate was scrick-shoe (1650s).[6]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) described a skate as a shoe armed with iron for sliding on the ice.[14] The verb, to glide on skates, is recorded from 1696,[3][2] and its transferred and figurative uses followed: to glide lightly and rapidly (1775), and to skate over thin ice or to skate over a subject, to pass over it hurriedly (1841, in Emerson).[3] The noun was extended to the roller skate by 1876,[3][6] and the phrase get one's skates on, hurry up, began as military slang in 1895.[3][15] Colloquially skate has meant to leave quickly since 1915,[3] and in 19th-century American slang skeet or skate meant to rush off.[17] In US slang it has also meant to get away with something, to escape a duty (1945).[6][3] In North America a skate is also a set of tackle for halibut fishing (1882).[3]

Timeline

  • 1662 – skeates, in Pepys's Diary.[16][3]
  • 1696 – the verb, to glide on skates.[3][2]
  • 1841 – figurative, to skate over a subject.[3]
  • 1853 – an act or spell of skating.[3][6]
  • 1876 – a roller skate.[3][6]
  • 1895 – to get one's skates on.[3]
  • 1945 – (US slang) to get away with something.[6][3]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A boot or frame with a metal blade fixed to the sole, for gliding over ice; an ice skate.
  2. A roller skate.
  3. A spell of skating: We went for a skate on the frozen canal.

Verb

  1. To move on skates: The children skated round the rink all afternoon.
  2. To glide lightly or smoothly over a surface.
  3. To deal with a subject only briefly or superficially; often skate over or skate around.
  4. (US slang) To avoid a duty or punishment; to get away with something.

Phrase

  1. get one's skates on (British, informal): to hurry.
  2. skate on thin ice: to be in or risk a dangerous or delicate situation.

Word family

  • skater
  • skateboard
  • roller-skate
  • ice-skate
  • outskate

skate3 worn-out horse; contemptible person

Etymology

The slang word for a nag or a mean person is of uncertain origin.[3][12][18] The American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster think it is perhaps or probably an alteration of the dialect word skite, a contemptible person, seen also in blatherskite.[5][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A poor, worn-out horse: 1894, in Kipling in the Century Magazine,[3][2] and 1896 in American slang in Green's Dictionary of Slang.[17]

Semantic evolution

From the inferior horse the word passed to people: a mean, contemptible or dishonest person from 1896, in George Ade, especially in the compound cheapskate.[3][12] Merriam-Webster also records a neutral use, simply "fellow", as in a good skate.[2] In American slang a labor skate was a trade-union official (1930).[3][12]

Timeline

  • 1894 – a worn-out horse.[3][2]
  • 1896 – a mean or contemptible person.[3]
  • 1930 – (US) labor skate, a union official.[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. (slang, chiefly US) A worn-out, decrepit horse; a nag.
  2. (slang, chiefly US) A mean or contemptible person; also, in friendly use, a fellow.

Word family

  • cheapskate

References

  1. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
  8. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  9. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  10. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
  11. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  12. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  13. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  14. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  15. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  16. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  17. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  18. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press