Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A fellow; a person.
  • noun A decrepit horse; a nag.
  • noun Any of various cartilaginous fishes chiefly of the family Rajidae, having a flattened body with greatly expanded pectoral fins that extend around the head, and laying eggs enclosed in hard cases.
  • noun An ice skate, roller skate, or inline skate.
  • noun Informal A skateboard.
  • noun The act or a period of skating or skateboarding.
  • intransitive verb To glide or move along on skates.
  • intransitive verb To move or progress in a smooth, easy, or unconcerned manner.
  • intransitive verb To ride or perform tricks on a skateboard.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A contrivance for enabling a person to glide swiftly on ice, consisting of a steel runner fixed either to a wooden sole provided with straps and buckles, or to a light iron or steel frame-work having adjustable clamps or other means of attachment to a shoe or boot. See roller-skate.
  • To glide over ice and snow on skates.
  • noun In New Zealand, the skate is Raja nasuta.
  • noun A raioid or batoid plagiostomous fish of the family Raiidæ and genus Raia; a kind of ray.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A metallic runner with a frame shaped to fit the sole of a shoe, -- made to be fastened under the foot, and used for moving rapidly on ice.
  • noun See under Roller.
  • intransitive verb To move on skates.
  • noun (Zoöl.) Any one of numerous species of large, flat elasmobranch fishes of the genus Raia, having a long, slender tail, terminated by a small caudal fin. The pectoral fins, which are large and broad and united to the sides of the body and head, give a somewhat rhombic form to these fishes. The skin is more or less spinose.
  • noun See Sea purse.
  • noun any marine leech of the genus Pontobdella, parasitic on skates.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A fish of the family Rajidae in the superorder Batoidea (rays) which inhabit most seas. Skates generally have small heads with protruding muzzles, and wide fins attached to a flat body.
  • noun A runner or blade, usually of steel, with a frame shaped to fit the sole of a shoe, made to be fastened under the foot, and used for gliding on ice.
  • noun abbreviated form of ice skate or roller skate
  • noun The act of skateboarding
  • noun The act of roller skating or ice skating
  • verb To move along a surface (ice or ground) using skates.
  • verb To skateboard

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun sports equipment that is worn on the feet to enable the wearer to glide along and to be propelled by the alternate actions of the legs
  • noun large edible rays having a long snout and thick tail with pectoral fins continuous with the head; swim by undulating the edges of the pectoral fins
  • verb move along on skates

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Perhaps alteration of dialectal skite, contemptible person; see blatherskite.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English scate, from Old Norse skata.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Dutch schaats, stilt, skate (taken as pl.), from Middle Dutch schaetse, from Old North French escache, stilt, perhaps of Germanic origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Back-formation from earlier scates, from Dutch schaats, from Old Northern French escache, compare Modern French échasse.

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