Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To go on an extended walk for pleasure or exercise.
  • intransitive verb To rise, especially to rise upward out of place.
  • intransitive verb To increase or raise in amount, especially abruptly.
  • intransitive verb To pull or raise with a sudden motion; hitch.
  • intransitive verb Football To snap (the ball).
  • noun A long walk or march.
  • noun An often abrupt increase or rise.
  • idiom (take a hike) To leave because one's presence is unwanted. Often used in the imperative.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To thrust; push; punch or gore with the horns.
  • To toss up and down; swing; jolt.
  • To lift out with a sharp instrument; move with a jerk; pull; raise; lift.
  • To snatch away; run off with.
  • To dismiss peremptorily.
  • To move suddenly or hastily; go away; walk off; decamp.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb Dial. or Colloq. To hike one's self; specif., to go with exertion or effort; to tramp; to march laboriously.
  • intransitive verb to take a long walk, especially for pleasure or exercise.
  • noun The act of hiking.
  • noun A long walk usually for exercise or pleasure or exercise; a tramp; a march.
  • noun an increase in cost, rate, etc..
  • noun the amount a salary is increased.
  • transitive verb Dial. or Colloq. To move with a swing, toss, throw, jerk, or the like.
  • transitive verb To raise with a quick movement.
  • transitive verb To raise (a price) quickly or significantly in a single step.
  • transitive verb (Football) To pass (the ball) from the center to the quarterback at the start of the play; to snap (the ball).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A long walk.
  • noun An abrupt increase.
  • noun American football The snap of the ball to start a play.
  • noun A command to a dog sled team, given by a musher
  • verb To take a long walk for pleasure or exercise.
  • verb To unfairly or suddenly raise a price.
  • verb American football To snap the ball to start a play.
  • verb nautical To lean out to the windward side of a sailboat in order to counterbalance the effects of the wind on the sails.
  • verb To pull up or tug upwards sharply.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the amount a salary is increased
  • noun an increase in cost
  • noun a long walk usually for exercise or pleasure
  • verb increase
  • verb walk a long way, as for pleasure or physical exercise

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From English dialectal hyke ("to walk vigorously"), probably a Northern form of hitch, from Middle English hytchen, hichen, icchen ("to move, jerk, stir"). Cognate with Scots hyke ("to move with a jerk"), German dialectal hicken ("to hobble, walk with a limp"), Danish hinke ("to hop"). More at hick.

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Examples

Comments

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  • When crewing on a small (or even large, I suppose) sailboat, the act of hiking is using the weight of the crew as movable ballast to offset the heeling of the craft.

    December 15, 2006

  • Also, a long walk. :-)

    December 15, 2006

  • Hike prices up mean to walk up the prices.

    Original meaning is to Hike a hill.

    September 20, 2010

  • In the stats there's a hike spike in early 1990s.

    September 20, 2010