Slalom

//ˈslɑː.ləm// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The sport of skiing in a zigzag course through gates. attributive, often, uncountable

    "Slalom is her strongest Olympic sport."

  2. 2
    a downhill race over a winding course defined by upright poles wordnet
  3. 3
    Any similar activity on other vehicles, including canoes and water skis. uncountable

    "Disowned by my father... I began an erratic and increasingly steep slalom. Rejected would-be mercenary pilot, failed Jesuit novice, unpublished writer of pornography… yet for all these failures I had a tenacious faith in myself, a messiah as yet without"

  4. 4
    A course used for the sport of slalom. countable

    "These first two slaloms have sixty gates each."

  5. 5
    A race or competition wherein participants each perform the sport of slalom. countable

    "He has won six World Cup slaloms."

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  1. 6
    Short for autoslalom abbreviation, alt-of, uncountable
Verb
  1. 1
    To race in a slalom. intransitive
  2. 2
    race on skis around obstacles wordnet
  3. 3
    To move in a slalom-like manner. intransitive

    "Snow fell, swirled, slalomed past our windows."

Synonyms

All synonyms
downhill skiinggiant slalomparallel slalom

Example

More examples

"In the slalom event, his skis hit almost every pole on the slope."

Etymology

From Norwegian sla (“steep, hill side”) and låm (“trail”).

Related phrases

Super GSuper-Gbanked slalomcanoe slalomgiant slalomkayak slalomparallel giant slalomparallel slalomsuper giant slalomwater ski

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.