Rollerskate

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. A footwear item equipped with wheels underneath, allowing a person to glide smoothly on flat surfaces
2. A type of shoe that has small wheels attached to its sole, enabling controlled movement by rolling
3. Footwear designed with wheels to facilitate smooth and fast movement across level ground

Etymology: "Roller skate" is the open form, and "rollerskate" is simply the same compound written solid, so the history belongs to the phrase as a whole. It joins "roller," an object that rolls, with "skate," a word that once named a shoe fitted with a blade for gliding over ice. The earlier "skate" came from Dutch "schaats," and the ice skate was the original form, so the wheeled version was named by analogy with a device already familiar to people. The wheeled skate is the newer thing. Its name builds on the older "skate" and on "roller," which had long meant a cylinder that turns as things are rolled across it. Joining the two produced a plain description of a shoe with wheels in place of a blade. Because the parts are so transparent, the word needed no special coinage: it is a straightforward compound of two existing English words. The verb grew from the noun in the usual way. Once people routinely wore roller skates, "to roller skate" became a natural way to describe the activity, and the solid spelling "rollerskate" is an alternative form of that same verb and noun.

Synonyms: rollerblade, skate, glide, coast, wheel