Definitions

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

  • noun An Inuit or Yupik boat consisting of a light wooden frame covered with watertight skins except for a single or double opening in the center, and propelled by a double-bladed paddle.
  • noun A lightweight boat of similar or open design.
  • intransitive verb To go, travel, or race in a kayak.
  • intransitive verb To go or travel on (a body of water) by kayak.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In Greenland, a light fishing-boat, made of sealskins stretched over a wooden frame, having in the middle of the upper side an opening to receive the fisherman, who wraps himself in a flap of sealskin, which is laced close around the hole to prevent the penetration of water.
  • To hunt or travel in a kayak. Eskimo kayaking near Amadjuak Bay, Baffinland.

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

  • noun (Naut.) A light canoe, made of skins stretched over a frame, and usually capable of carrying but one person, who sits amidships and uses a double-bladed paddle. It is peculiar to the Eskimos and other Arctic tribes.

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

  • noun A type of small boat, powered by the occupant or occupants using a double-bladed paddle in a sitting position.
  • verb intransitive to use a kayak, to travel or race in a kayak
  • verb transitive to traverse a body of water by kayak.

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

  • verb travel in a small canoe
  • noun a small canoe consisting of a light frame made watertight with animal skins; used by Eskimos

Etymologies

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

[Inuit and Yupik qajaq.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Western Canadian Inuktitut ᖃᔭᖅ (qajaq, "man's boat"), from Proto-Eskimo *qyaq.

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Examples

Comments

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  • It is a boat, not a ship. Is there any way to remove someone else's erroneous tag?

    December 23, 2008

  • No.

    December 23, 2008

  • No, there isn't--and in any case, that person (who could very well be Yours Truly) may be using this as a sort of "shortcut" tag to avoid having to individually tag an entire list of words when tagging the whole list at once would do.

    Don't know about anyone else, but as far as I'm concerned, you can tag words as you wish, so long as you're not insulting or offensive about it. :-)

    December 23, 2008

  • I, like reesetee, suspect that this tag is the result of someone tagging an entire list at once (you know you can do that, right? Saves A LOT of time!).

    In general, if you're like me at all, you'll see a lot of tags that may bug you in their inaccuracy or impenetrableness, but there's no way to change them unless you are the individual who tagged them as such. Tags help organize stuff, and that sometimes means a given tag is useful only for an individual rather than the collective. I know I have some tags that are important to me on specific lists, and I also know that some others don't like them.

    December 23, 2008

  • See tricks in case you want to understand who used specific tags on a page.

    December 23, 2008

  • Seeing as this is a palindrome, a kayak should be able to travel backwards as easily as it travels forwards.

    August 8, 2022