a blog by Peter Leonard
Heading up to Crystal Mountain tonight to ski Friday and Saturday. This will be my first time skiing in Washington state, and my first time on skis this entire season. Despite the late timeframe, looks like we've got some new snow coming down:
Curiously, there is no verb for "to ski" in Swedish. You use "att åka skidor", literally "to ride skis."
Early in the history of the loan-word (from Norwegian) into English, the pronunciation mirrored the Nordic languages: shee, not skee. I believe the BBC persisted in pronouncing it this way for a while, and Merriam-Webster still gives it as an alternate, chiefly British. All sources list the word as coming from Old Norse skið, meaning cleft wood, but also snow-shoe.