In the "femma" thread, Kaleh says "chute" means a passageway for dirty clothes, among other things. She got me to wondering if the term, "shoot the rapids" is derived from the French word for rapids, "chutes?" In Central Oregon there's a river with many rapids and small waterfalls named the Deschutes, compiments of the French fur traders who populated the Northwest before the Anglos did.

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary... Chute..4. Cdn. a rapid.(French chute fall (of water, etc.), from Old French cheoite fem.past part. of cheoir fall from Latin cadere; in some senses = SHOOT)

Good going, Duncan! You've mated the two meanings in my thread title perfectly! Still, it doesn't answer my initial question as to whether it was intentional to make a verb or a noun when one "shoots" the "chutes." (Or "chutes". if you subscribe to that punctuation).

quote:

In Central Oregon there's a river with many rapids and small waterfalls named the Deschutes, compiments of the French fur traders who populated the Northwest before the Anglos did.

When the present border between Alaska and Canada was settled, the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) realized that its most remote trading post on the Yukon River was actually in Alaska. They closed it down and moved upriver to Canada. A while later, an American exploration party came upriver from the coast to check out the supposedly pristine wilderness that they had purchased from the Russians. They were astounded to come upon the abandoned HBC post. They reputedly concluded that the sign over the door meant "Here Before Christ"!