A board similar to a water ski that a person stands on while being towed behind a motorboat, or the phenomenon where a vehicle's tires lose grip on wet pavement.
From 'aqua' (water) and 'plane' (from Latin 'planus,' flat). The sporting equipment was named in the early 1900s for its flat design skimming across water. The traffic term emerged later to describe tires separating from wet roads.
Aquaplaning in cars is genuinely terrifying—when your tires hit a water layer on the road, you're essentially surfing on water with thousands of pounds of metal, which is why driving slowly in heavy rain can literally save your life.
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