rollercoastern.
/ˈrəʊləˌkəʊstə/, U.S. /ˈroʊlərˌkoʊstər/ 1. An attraction at an amusement park or fairground consisting of a light railway track with small, open cars, on which people ride at high speed through sharp turns, steep slopes, etc.
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society > leisure > entertainment > place of amusement or entertainment > fairground or amusement park > [noun] > fairground ride > roller coaster or railway
montagne russe1834
mountain railway1851
switchback1863
rollercoaster1883
scenic railway1890
chute1908
coaster1910
moon rocket1921
motor-coaster1928
giant racer1934
Big Dipper1935
scenic1956
1883 Chicago Tribune 30 Sept. 16/5 A curious structure is now in course of construction... It will be known as ‘The Roller Coaster’, and the objects claimed for it are health and amusement.
1888 Pall Mall Gaz. 11 Sept. 4/2 The rage for rapid transit through the air,..by tobogganing, switchbacks, or roller-coasters.
1903 Boston Transcript 7 Oct. 16 The cable cars run over routes that would shame a Coney Island roller coaster.
1931 Charlottesville (Va.) Progress 23 Mar. 12/8 Swift moving elevators and roller coasters also give her the jitters.
1945 J. Steinbeck Cannery Row xvi. 100 Phyllis Mae had broken her leg getting out of the roller coaster.
2003 Sugar Aug. 11/2 Determined to show them I wasn't a wuss, I risked the rollercoaster.
2.
a. In extended use. A road that is hilly or twisted.
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1891 Engin. Mag. 1 340 The rapid transit problem... A partial statement of the principal [solutions]... Major Henning's gravity system on the ‘roller-coaster’ principle.]
1896 Aeronaut. Ann. 158 The reader doubtless knows the ‘roller coasters’ in which a car runs down one slope and ascends another.
1921 Outing June 118/2 Except that the road does not cross itself, no man-made figure eight ever approached this natural roller coaster.
2009 ‘R. Keeland’ tr. S. Larsson Girl who played with Fire xxvii. 470 Her first three hundred metres on Bjurman's badly maintained forest track was a regular roller coaster, and she felt like a living gyro.
b. figurative. Something, esp. an experience or event, characterized by repeated abrupt or unpredictable changes. Also in emotional rollercoaster.
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1901 Critic (N.Y.) July 40/2 The crying need of Boston, intellectually and spiritually, is something..that can make a Boston idea or a Boston set of ideas stay in place. Thinking in Boston..is getting to be a kind of huge, sociable, bewildering roller coaster.
1927 H. S. Brown in G. Overton Mirrors of Year 100 Business must have its up and downs; but there is no necessity of its riding on an everlasting roller-coaster.
1936 Time 10 Aug. 26/3 Jock and Mary went careening up & down the economic and emotional roller-coaster on which the rest of the world was riding.
1941 C. Brackett & B. Wilder Ball of Fire (film script) 28 All right, gates. All right, squares, plant your frames solid in your chairs and latch onto the roller coaster. We're going through the night life of Manhattan—every juice joint.
1961 John o' London's 6 July 21/1 The ever-accelerating roller-coaster of science.
1971 G. G. Luce Body Time v. 170 A physician who knew his patient's time print, the shape of his temperature and activity-rest cycle, and who knew where his patient was on this daily roller coaster, might have much less trouble interpreting the results of clinic tests.
1993 Arena May–June 15/2 Thank you for providing the soundtrack for the emotional rollercoaster that was my adolescence and teens.
2008 Sci. Amer. (U.K. ed.) Jan. 9/1 The past 15 years have been a roller coaster for gene therapy.
3. Surfing. A manoeuvre in which a surfer ascends the face of a wave and rebounds off the lip at the crest. Also: a wave with breaks in various sections across its length (also rollercoaster wave).
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society > leisure > sport > types of sport or game > water sports except racing > surfing > [noun] > actions of surfer
kick-out1801
ride1883
side-slip1913
surf1917
slide1935
pull-out1957
quasimodo1960
head dip1962
nose-riding1962
rolling1962
spinner1962
stalling1962
toes over1962
cutback1963
Eskimo roll1964
re-entry1968
right1968
rollercoaster1968
barrel roll1971
hold-down1982
railing1983
cross-stepping1990
cross-step1994
turtle roll2001
1968 Surfer Jan. 53/2 Martinson attempts a roller coaster down an Arpoador wave.
1970 Stud. in Eng. (Univ. Cape Town) 1 27 Yet another kind of wave is the rollercoaster... A rollercoaster wave is one that does not break continuously from one end to the other, but breaks in sections all along its length, thus offering the surfer a tricky, ‘up and down’ ride.
1971 Sports Illustr. 22 Feb. 62/2 Surfers rode parallel to the beach instead of head on into it, and tricks such as spinners, barrel rolls, cutbacks, roller coasters and Iron Crosses proliferated.
1991 T. Cralle Surfin'ary Roller coaster, a surfing maneuver in which the surfer comes out of a fast bottom turn, slides up the face of the wave, and rebounds off the lip at the crest of the wave.
2005 M. Warshaw Encycl. Surfing (new ed.) 512/2 Roller coaster, Arcing maneuver during which the surfer rides at an angle up the wave face, banks off the crest, and drops back down to the trough.
Compounds
C1. attributive, chiefly designating something literally or figuratively resembling a rollercoaster.
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1905 Glenwood (Iowa) Opinion 5 Jan. Just about a hundred yards from the finish on this roller-coaster [horse racing] track, there was a pitch-hole.
1935 A. M. Lindbergh Let. 17 Sept. in Locked Rooms & Open Doors (1974) 311 The Camden hills on the mainland are just green roller-coaster hills, one rippling behind the other.
1949 Sun (Baltimore) 1 July 28/5 Maryland found herself saddled with a system of ‘roller coaster’ roads.
1957 N. Frye Sound & Poetry p. xx Speeded-up metrical rhythms, such as Swinburne's roller-coaster anapests, are unmusical.
1982 N.Y. Rocker Jan. 27/2 It's a rollercoaster rap over a wild mix of kazoos, horn breaks, party voices, [etc.].
1988 D. Ing Chernobyl Syndrome 277 We don't rely on this option because our place is reachable only by roller-coaster roads.
C2.
rollercoaster ride n. (a) a ride on a rollercoaster; (b) figurative a journey or experience of extreme and rapid changes; = sense 2b.
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1909 Chicago Sunday Tribune 3 Oct. 7/1 The capital is hungry for roller coaster rides, band concerts, chutes, and other carousals of that nature.
1953 K. A. Porter Let. 16 Oct. (1990) viii. 452 A roller coaster ride through the medieval Latin poets straight into late middle English—well, a couple of the snappier things of Chaucer's.
1997 N. Faith Black Box viii. 101 The gyrations resulting from the loss of the controls were probably more extreme than you'd find on the wildest amusement park rollercoaster ride.
2005 Times Lit. Suppl. 6 May 3/1 Shostakovich's career was a lifelong rollercoaster ride of musical triumphs and political free falls.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, November 2010; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
rollercoasterv.
/ˈrəʊləˌkəʊstə/, U.S. /ˈroʊlərˌkoʊstər/ 1. intransitive. To move or travel as if on a rollercoaster; to move or travel quickly over a hilly or twisty course.
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1931 P. L. Hoefler Afr. Speaks ix. 190 We roller-coastered up and down through the Aberdare Mountains.
1962 Chicago Tribune 28 Oct. vi. 11/6 We were roller-coastering through hill towns in the dark of night.
1983 N.Y. Times 13 Mar. 19/1 He decided to give chase to a couple on a moped, roller-coastered around the corners of the narrow streets and jumped curbs to miss other cars.
2002 M. Rosenblum in M. Flanagan & A. Booth Reload vii. 123 She clutched the grimy seat-back as they roller-coastered through the east hills.
2. intransitive. figurative. Of a situation, event, or phenomenon: to change abruptly and unpredictably.
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1954 Los Angeles Times 18 Oct. c2/2 During the 50 years of his active stewardship, the A's really roller-coastered.
1965 L. R. Hubbard Scientol. Abridged Dict. 26 A person ‘roller coasters’, i.e., gets better, then worse, etc., only when connected to a Suppressive Person or Group, and in order to cease roller coastering must receive processing intended to handle such.
1977 Time 24 Jan. 14/2 Private sterling deposits have fluctuated little, while official deposits have roller-coastered.
1986 E. E. Scharff Worldly Power ii. 29 The market roller-coastered for the first six months of the year, finishing just where it had started—with the Dow around 200.
1998 N. Jarman in D. Miller Material Cultures iii. vi. 130 Although the cotton industry collapsed under competition from England, the linen industry rollercoastered through cycles of boom and bust.
2006 Wallpaper June 44/2 The nauseous speed at which bag fashion is rollercoastering has left us nostalgic for a time when picking up a stylish tote meant one thing—a trip to Hervé Chapelier.
3. intransitive. Surfing. To perform a rollercoaster (rollercoaster n. 3). rare.
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society > leisure > sport > types of sport or game > water sports except racing > surfing > surf-ride [verb (intransitive)] > actions of surfer
pearl-dive1923
slide1931
hot-dog1959
to hang five, ten1962
to kick out1962
to cut back1963
to pull out1963
to pull off1964
nose-ride1965
rollercoaster1969
shred1977
rail1986
to pull in1987
1969 Observer 3 Aug. 35/1 He may ‘rollercoaster’, bursting through a breaking wave, turning and bouncing down through the foam.
2004 D. Kampion Lost Coast 19 Usually I would have roller-coastered or straightened off, but I knew it was the last wave of the day, so I pulled it up tight under the lip and went for it.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, November 2010; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1883
v.1931