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.
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.
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 Etym Online, 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 first year of the 114th Olympiad.
And if you're actually a genius, who's doing the Olympiad math in your head?
You might think it should be the second year of the 114th Olympiad.
But the calculation is complicated by the fact that the Olympiads ran from midsummer to midsummer.
And 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.
This root also gives us the decathlon Greek deka meaning 10 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 skith, 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.
Now slalom.
That's a fun word to say slalom.
It's from a Norwegian word that combines sla, meaning slope or sloping, and lom, 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 in 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 Badrut.
At the time, St.
Moritz was a summer vacation destination for the upper class, who took mineral cures from May through September.
But Badrut wasn't content with having guests for just one-third of the year.
So he convinced some wealthy regulars to stay through the entire winter at his Colm Hotel, promising to refund their money if they didn't enjoy their stay.
Now by keeping them entertained with food, alcohol and activities.
He quickly established the concept of winter resorting and wintering in St.
Moritz at Bad Roots 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 the straightaways.
Eventually, the locals' complaints became so loud that Johannes' son Kasper, built a dedicated half-pipe for the guests and more nearby tracks and formal competitions followed.
Another Olympic sport skeleton, where the athletes go head first 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 skjelkja, 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 down on 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.
Finally, I'll leave you with a few more wintery stories.
Hockey takes its name from the shape of the stick.
According to Edamon Line, 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 are etymologically walking on tiny stilts.
Next, toboggan has a completely different origin from the European sledding terms.
It comes from the Algonquin language family and is likely the only indigenous North American word that made its way into international winter sports vocabulary.
Parka is another indigenous winter word that you may hear during the Olympic broadcast, and it made its way into English from Nenets, a Samoyetic 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, and 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 Algonquin 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.
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.
So 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 zero 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 zero and boiling at 100.
For many years, this scale went by the name centigrade from the French which, according to Edam Online, 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 meant one hundredth of a gradient, a unit of angular measurement.
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 the major style guides say Celsius is the way to go, they don't quite all agree on the formatting.
The Associated Press style book skips the degree symbol and puts a space between the number and the letter.
32, space capital C.
And the Chicago Manual of Style says to use a space in the degree symbol in technical writing 32 space degree symbol, capital C and the degree symbol with no spaces in general writing 32 degree symbol, capital C all together.
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 100-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, Grandma 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 it's because I couldn't pronounce pickle or how that came to me, but it seemed to have stuck.
So my family members would always say, Masha, do you want a piqua?
So that is our fan elect.
Thank you.
I love your show.
Thanks, Masha.
That's a fun one.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast.
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I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl.
That's all.
Thanks for listening.
