Transcript of “Sledding vs. Sleighing vs. Sleigh-Riding”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello. So my name is Katie Flanagan, and I’m from Factoryville, Pennsylvania,
Which is about a half hour north of Scranton.
Tell us what’s on your mind.
What I called in about was the term sleigh riding. So, you know, growing up,
We would get a lot of snow in the winters, and we’d always go sleigh riding in the winters,
Which I always thought was a very common term until I was in my, you know, late teens,
Early 20s and I met somebody from the Boston area and told him that I enjoyed sleigh riding.
And his response was, oh, well, you must have horses. And I said, no, why would I have horses
To go sleigh riding? And he said, well, a sleigh, you must ride in a sleigh and get pulled by horses.
And I was like, no, it’s just, you know, he said, oh, you mean sledding, which, you know, I’ve heard
That term sledding around here, too. And I lived in Vermont for a number of years and people there
Would often refer to it as sliding. And so I was always just very curious where sleigh riding came
From. And, you know, for folks around here, you know, you don’t even think about it. It’s just
Obviously we go sleigh riding and it doesn’t seem like a strange term. So I was just wondering where
That phrase came from. All right. So let’s separate these out before Martha tackles this. So
So you say sleigh riding, S-L-E-I-G-H.
The person from Boston said sledding, S-L-D-D-I-N-G.
And when you lived in Vermont, they said sliding, S-L-I-D-I-N-G.
Correct.
Okay, got it.
Yeah, it’s interesting.
There are lots of different terms for this, even besides those three.
In fact, when researchers were going around asking people about dialect for the Dictionary of American Regional English, they had that as one of the questions.
And they said sliding, which is more common in the northern region.
Sledding, which is what I grew up with in Kentucky.
That’s kind of scattered all over the country.
In Pennsylvania, in Ohio, you never heard sled riding?
Because that’s particularly common.
Mm—
No, usually just sleigh riding.
Okay, sleigh riding.
Yeah, that one is particularly common across the middle of the country,
And including Pennsylvania, so I’m not surprised.
And in the West, a lot of times people will say sleighing without the riding in there.
This guy in Boston was expecting this large vehicle with runners
That a bunch of people could sit in and horses to pull it that you would direct by reins,
And they would be in a harness and this whole big deal, something you might see on a Christmas card.
Yes, exactly.
And I was shocked that he thought I would have horses.
Yeah, you were probably just on, like, this plastic roll-up thing that you bought at the corner store.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, like, yeah, I mean, sleigh riding could be for any kind of sleigh or sled that you would have.
Yeah, maybe the little wooden ones with the little red runners.
And that’s the confusing part is that some of the sleds are a little more elaborate.
They’ll just take one body, you’re down on your belly, but they do have those little red runners like the big full sleds that seat a lot of people.
So they look kind of like little sleighs.
Yeah, we would often call the bigger ones, I guess without the runners, we would call those toboggans that we would go down.
Yep.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, we would say tobogganing.
Oh, well, that’s so interesting.
Thank you so much.
My whole life I’ve always wondered and always, you know, I try to bring up this activity without saying the word just to see what other people call it.
So now I have a story to explain it.
You’re a natural field worker.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, I do love language.
And I love this show so much.
And, you know, we’re trying to keep the tradition on with our kids.
They’re always asking, what does that mean?
What does that mean?
There are ways to find out.
And thank you for calling to find out this one.
We appreciate it.
All right.
Bye-bye.
