What is a Ski?

What is a Ski?
The practice of attaching boards to the feet in order to slide over snow goes back thousands of years. The word that has come down to us from the earliest times is ski. Recently snowboards, split-boards, firn skis, and many other variants have appeared, but they are all descended from the same ancestor. In this project, no effort will be made to separate exploits using one sort of gear from those using another. The word glisse has been proposed by some as an inclusive term for sliding on snow, but it won't be used here. In this project, the word ski applies to all forms of sliding on snow, an acknowledgment that this important word connects us through many generations to the beginnings of the sport.