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Glite Dictionary
🏃‍♂️ To race on skates ⛸️ A racing skate
speed skate

speed skate

3.2
An ice skate with a long straight blade for fast racing on ice
  • noun
  • /spiːd skeɪt/
translation icon : patín de velocidad
  • Many competitors prefer to wear a speed skate when training for long-distance events.

Examples

  • The athlete sharpened their speed skate blades before the big race.

  • He practiced for hours on his speed skate to improve his performance.

  • So yeah, people have to just very, very Charles, one other thing, why are speed skates longer in their blade than hockey skates?

Synonyms

racing skate
vsspeed skate
1 4.6

An ice skate with a long thin blade for going fast on ice

means the same thing but is worded differently

How Fast

speed skate
3.2
hockey skate
1 2.8

Surface Forms

speed skate singular
speed skates plural

Morphology

speed + skate

The meaning 'to race or skate at high speed' is directly and compositionally derived from combining 'speed' (high velocity) with 'skate' (to move on skates), yielding a clear manner-of-motion interpretation. This is a productive, cross-linguistically common pattern in English, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can readily infer the MWE meaning.

Etymology

Speed skate is a compound of speed and skate. Imagine a skate with a very long, thin blade that lets a skater glide much faster in a race, and that image explains the meaning 'an ice skate with a long blade made for speed'.