sledge
n. countablen. a vehicle that you use for travelling over snow or ice. It usually has long, thin pieces of metal or wood on the bottom instead of wheels.
n. a vehicle mounted on runners, used for transporting people or goods over snow or ice. Often used for recreation or in polar regions.
The children took their sledge to the top of the snowy hill.
During the heavy winter storm, the only way to reach the remote cabin was by using a horse-drawn sledge.
Early Arctic explorers relied heavily on dog-drawn sledges to transport essential supplies across the treacherous, frozen landscape where wheeled vehicles were entirely useless.
From Middle English slegge, from Old English sleċġ (“sledgehammer; mallet”), from Proto-Germanic *slagjǭ. Cognate with Dutch slegge (“sledge”), Swedish slägga (“sledge”), Norwegian Bokmål slegge (“sledge”), Norwegian Nynorsk sleggje (“sledge”), Icelandic sleggja (“sledge”), German Schlägel.
Dialectal Dutch sleedse, from Middle Dutch sleedse, from the root of sled.
From Sledge (“a surname”), influenced by sledgehammer. First attested in the 1960s in Australian English. According to Ian Chappell, originated in Adelaide during the 1963/4 or 1964/5 Sheffield Shield season. A cricketer who swore in the presence of a woman was taken to be as subtle as a sledgehammer (meaning unsubtle) and was called “Percy” or “Sledge”, from singer Percy Sledge (whose song When a Man Loves a Woman was a hit at the time). Directing insults or obscenities at the opposition team then became known as sledging.
Commonly called a 'sled' in American English; 'sledge' is the standard term in British English.