gondola
pronunciation
How to pronounce gondola in British English:
UK [ˈɡɒndələ]
How to pronounce gondola in American English:
US [ˈɡɑːndələ]
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- Noun:
- a low flat-bottomed freight car with fixed sides but no roof
- long narrow flat-bottomed boat propelled by sculling; traditionally used on canals of Venice
- car suspended from an airship and carrying personnel and cargo and power plant
Word Origin
- gondola
- gondola: [16] The gondola, the narrow boat used on Venetian canals, gets its name from the way it rocks gently in the water. Italian gondola is an adaptation of gondolà, a word meaning ‘roll, rock’ in the Rhaeto-Romanic dialect of Friuli, in northeastern Italy (Rhaeto-Romanic is a cover term for a group of Romance-language dialects spoken in southern Switzerland, northern Italy, and the Tyrol). Gondola was first applied to the cabin suspended from an airship or balloon in the 1890s (probably as a translation of German gondel).
- gondola (n.)
- 1540s, "long, narrow flat-bottomed boat used in Venice," from Italian (Venetian) gondola, earlier in English as goundel, from Old Italian gondula, of unknown origin; according to Barnhart, perhaps a diminutive of gonda, a name of a kind of boat. Used of flat, open railway cars by 1871. Meaning "cabin of an airship" is from 1896, though it was used hypothetically in 1881 in a futurism piece titled "300 Years Hence." Of ski-lifts from 1957.
Example
- 1. Optional admission includes national park fee , columbia icefield snow coach , lake louise gondola .
- 2. Optional admission includes national park fee , columbia icefield snow coach & lake louise gondola .
- 3. When seindal shouts " follow that gondola " we hot-tail it after giorgia boscolo , the first female gondolier in 900 years , before attempting a three-point turn in san polo and casually passing in front of an enormous car ferry on the giudecca canal .
- 4. Optional admission includes national park fee , columbia icefield snow coach , lake louise gondola , butchart gardens , bc ferry .
- 5. Optional admission includes national park fee , columbia icefield snow coach , lake louise gondola , butchart gardens & bc ferry .