1158. This week, we go full Winter Olympics, tracing the origin of "ski," "luge," "toboggan," and more. Then, we look at why we say "Celsius" instead of "centigrade."
1158. This week, we go full Winter Olympics, tracing the origin of "ski," "luge," "toboggan," and more. Then, we look at why we say "Celsius" instead of "centigrade."
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Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, and today, we're going to talk about words related to the Winter Olympics.
The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics began just a few days ago, and if you listen closely to the broadcast, you will hear an avalanche of interesting terms: "slalom," "luge," "toboggan," and more. Today, we'll trace some of their origins to Greek mountains, indigenous clothing, and even wealthy Swiss hotel guests who recklessly invented an Olympic sport.Â
Let's start with the word "Olympic" itself. It comes from Greece, where it was the name of Mount Olympos, supposed home of the Greek gods, but also a town called Olympia where the first ancient Olympic Games were held in 776 BCE in honor of Zeus, who had a temple there.Â
The related word "Olympiad" came into English in the late 14th century meaning "period of four years" between Olympic games, and highlights just what a big deal the Olympic Games were to the ancient Greeks because, according to Etymonline, they didn't use it just for sports — they also used it as an actual unit of time. For example, Alexander the Great died in 323 BCE, which ancient Greek historians referred to as the 1st year of the 114th Olympiad.Â
(If you're actually a genius who is doing the Olympiad math in your head, you might think that should be the second year of the 114th Olympiad, but the calculation is complicated by the fact that the Olympiads ran from mid-summer to mid-summer.)
While we're in ancient Greece, "athlete" comes from a Greek word meaning "one who competes for a prize" or "contestant," which comes from "athlos," meaning "contest" or "prize."Â
This root also gives us the decathlon (Greek "deka" meaning "ten" plus "athlos") and "biathlon," which has "bi" for two contests — in the Olympics, cross-country skiing and rifle shooting.
Although Greek gives us the Olympics, Norwegian and Old Norse dominate the language of skiing. Nearly every skiing term you know comes from Scandinavia.
The word "ski" itself entered English from Norwegian in 1755 and originally comes from the Old Norse word "skÃð," which meant "long snowshoe" or "stick of wood." The same Old Norse word probably also gave us the word "skid," as in to slip sideways.Â
Now, "slalom" — that's a fun word to say, "slalom" — it's from a Norwegian word that combines "sla" (meaning "slope" or "sloping") and "låm" (meaning "track" or "trail") — literally a "sloping track," according to Merriam-Webster. And at the slalom event at the Winter Olympics, you'll see skiers furiously zigzagging through a series of gates. The English term goes back to 1921, but the first slalom event at the modern Olympics didn't debut until 1936 in a combination event with downhill skiing.
Slalom is a type of Alpine skiing, essentially skiing where you go downhill, powered by gravity. The Winter Games have events in two skiing disciplines: Alpine skiing and Nordic skiing, which includes events like cross-country skiing, where you tend to propel yourself across more even terrain.
And here's my favorite story of all of winter sports etymology: it starts with a hotel owner, some bored British and American tourists, and a very annoyed Swiss town.
The sport of bobsleigh originated in the spa town of St. Moritz, Switzerland, in the 1800s, through the endeavors of hotel entrepreneur Johannes Badrutt.Â
At the time, St. Moritz was a summer vacation destination for the upper class, who took mineral cures from May through September. But Badrutt wasn't content with having guests for just one-third of the year.Â
So he convinced some wealthy regulars to stay through the entire winter at his Kulm Hotel, promising to refund their money if they didn't enjoy their stay.Â
By keeping them entertained with food, alcohol, and activities, he quickly established the concept of "winter resorting"; and wintering in St. Moritz at Badrutt's hotel became the rage among Victorian high society.
But apparently his activities weren't enough to fully occupy a hotel full of wealthy, adventurous Victorians. Beginning in the 1870s, some of these guests adapted local delivery sleds and toboggans and began racing down the twisting and narrow streets of St. Moritz, causing chaos.
When the tourists began colliding with pedestrians, the local residents were furious, and the sledders came up with a way to steer the sled, giving birth to the bobsleigh. The name "bobsled" (or "bobsleigh" in British English and in the Winter Olympics, where it first became an event in 1924) comes from the technique of "bobbing" — riders rocking back and forth to speed up on straightaways.
Eventually, the locals' complaints became so loud that Johannes' son Caspar built a dedicated half-pipe for the guests, and more nearby tracks and formal competitions followed.
Another Olympic sport — skeleton, where the athletes go headfirst on their stomachs — became organized around the same time, and one theory of how it got its name is that the metal frame of the early sled looked like a human skeleton. Another suggests it's a bad translation or corruption of the Norwegian word "kjelke" (an old word for a type of sleigh). Either way, "skeleton" is a terrifying name that seems fitting for a sport where you hurtle face-first down an icy track.
The similar sport, luge — where athletes also lie flat, but feet first on their backs — is the fastest sport in the Winter Olympics, and the first international luge competition was hosted in 1883 by hotels in the nearby town of Davos. Luge takes its name from a French dialect word meaning "small sled."Â
Finally, I'll leave you with a few more wintery stories.
"Hockey" takes its name from the shape of the stick. According to Etymonline, one possible source is a Middle French word which referred to a shepherd's crook — which looked similar to a modern hockey stick. It's a bit ironic that a sport known for its toughness may have started with a word for a tool used to herd gentle sheep.
Next, the word "skate" may come from Old French and Dutch words for stilts — very short ones, but stilts nonetheless. When you strap blades to your feet and glide across the ice, you're etymologically walking on tiny stilts.
Next, "toboggan" has a completely different origin from the European sledding terms. It comes from the Algonquian language family and is likely the only Indigenous North American word that made its way into international winter sports vocabulary.Â
"Parka" is another Indigenous winter word that you may hear during the Olympic broadcast, and it made its way into English from Nenets, a Samoyedic language of northern Russia, according to Merriam-Webster.
And finally, here's an especially fun one: snowboarding, which debuted in the Olympic Games in 1998, was originally called "snurfing" — a blend of "snow" and "surfing." (Thankfully, that name didn't stick.)
So when you watch the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, you're hearing Old Norse when they say "ski." And you're hearing ancient Greek when they say "athlete," French when they say "luge," and Algonquian when they say "toboggan."
And every time you see someone rocket down a bobsled track, you're watching the legacy of wealthy Victorian tourists who annoyed Swiss townspeople so much that someone had to build them their own track just to get them off the streets.
Language and sports have evolved together for thousands of years. And in the Winter Olympics, every word carries that history over the ice and snow.
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Watching all these winter sports also has me thinking about temperature. We use Fahrenheit in the United States, but almost everywhere else, the measure is Celsius.Â
Let's start with the man behind the name. Anders Celsius was a Swedish astronomer who lived from 1701 to 1744 and spent his career studying the stars, the Northern Lights, and — yes — thermometers. In 1742, he proposed a temperature scale based on the freezing and boiling points of water. That probably sounds familiar, but his original scale was actually the opposite of what we use today. On Celsius's thermometer, water boiled at 0 degrees and froze at 100 degrees!
But after Celsius died, Carolus Linnaeus convinced everyone to flip the scale to the version we use today, with freezing at 0 and boiling at 100.
For many years, this scale went by the name "centigrade" — from the French, which, according to Etymonline, borrowed from Latin "centum" meaning "hundred" and "gradus" meaning "steps." One hundred steps between freezing and boiling. Very appealing to scientists.
So why the switch to "Celsius"? Well, in 1948, the 9th General Conference on Weights and Measures — representing 33 nations — officially renamed the scale in honor of Anders Celsius. Besides giving credit where credit was due, it solved the confusion that in French and Spanish, "centigrade" also means one hundredth of a gradian — a unit of angular measurement.Â
And by adopting "Celsius," the conference was also completing a pattern because all the other major temperature scales were named after people. We have Kelvin (named for the Irish-Scottish physicist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin), Fahrenheit (named for Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, a Polish-born physicist of German heritage who worked mostly in the Dutch Republic), and now, Celsius.
Interestingly, even after the 1948 decision, "centigrade" hung around for decades. According to a 1962 article in the journal Science, American scientists were slow to adopt the new terminology, partly because many hadn't heard about the official name change, which might explain why your parents or grandparents still sometimes say "centigrade."
But even though major style guides say "Celsius" is the way to go, they don't quite all agree on the formatting. The Associated Press Stylebook skips the degree symbol and puts a space between the number and the letter: 32 C. And The Chicago Manual of Style says to use a space and the degree symbol in technical writing, 32 °C, and the degree symbol with no spaces in general writing: 32°C. And in general writing for both AP and Chicago, you can also write out the full words and use the word "degree" with normal spacing like you'd use with any other words.
So there you have it: "Centigrade" describes the hundred-step scale between freezing and boiling water, and "Celsius" honors the Swedish astronomer who first proposed it — just inverted. They mean the same thing, but if you want to be current, stick with Celsius. And the next time you're watching speed skating and the broadcast flashes a temperature reading, you'll know exactly where that word comes from — and why we stopped saying "centigrade" along the way.
Finally, I have a familect story from Masha.
"Hi Grammar Girl, this is Masha from Maryland, and I'm calling in with a familect. I recently remembered that when I was a young girl, I used to say 'piqua' for 'pickle,' and I don't know if that's because I couldn't pronounce 'pickle' or how that came to be, but it seems to have stuck. So my family members would always say, 'Masha, do you want a piqua?' So, that is our familect. Thank you, I love your show!"
Thanks, Masha, that's a fun one!
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