Definitions

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

  • noun A sport or athletic activity in which the participant seeks to move quickly and fluidly through an area, often an urban locale, by surmounting obstacles such as walls and railings and leaping across open spaces, as in a stairwell or between buildings.

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

  • noun An athletic discipline, in which practitioners traverse any environment in the most efficient way possible using their physical abilities, and which commonly involves running, jumping, vaulting, rolling, and other similar physical movements.
  • verb transitive, intransitive To freerun; to use parkour (to move over).

Etymologies

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

[French, from respelling of parcours, course (as in parcours du combattant, obstacle course (literally, “combatant's course”)), from Old French, right to drive animals in an area, route, from Medieval Latin percursus, from past participle of Latin percurrere, to run through, rove; see percurrent.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French parkour, altered spelling of parcours.

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Examples

Comments

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  • so i don't forget what it's called

    July 22, 2007

  • I had dreams about parkour as a kid, long before I knew what it was called. I imagined myself leaping across rooftops, bounding over cars, and scaling walls like I weighed five pounds. Then I'd wake up, and frown when I realized the laws of physics were still in effect. Fast-forward to the days of the internet and the first time I watched an urban ninja video. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside -- maybe dreams can come true.

    July 22, 2007

  • So, technically, you could say you invented parkour. ;-)

    July 22, 2007

  • I also invented sky surfing, but that's another story. Next time I have a crazy dream, I should probably do something about it so I don't have so many regrets later on. :-P

    July 22, 2007

  • There is a video game coming out sometime this year (2008) that will enable parkour moves in a first person perspective. Called "Mirrors Edge", it looks to be very cool.

    March 4, 2008

  • Parkour is about developing the physical and mental ability to get from one place to another quickly and effectively through human locomotion no matter what environment you are in or what is in your way. Practitioners of parkour train hard to overcome any obstacles in their way by running, climbing, crawling, and jumping over, around, or through it.

    June 10, 2009