Word.ws English Dictionary

bodysurf

bodysurf verb: to ride waves or surf without equipment, such as a surfboard.

Verb

bodysurf (third-person singular simple present bodysurfs, present participle bodysurfing, simple past and past participle bodysurfed)

  1. To ride waves or surf without equipment, such as a surfboard.
    • The key to bodysurfing a good wave is timing.2015, Paul Beatty, The Sellout, Oneworld Publications (2016), page 143
  2. To ride waves either without equipment or with a handboard.
    • Australians had been surfing lying down on 4-5 foot wooden surfboards before then and bodysurfing with wooden handboards — some had even heard about stand-up surfing in Hawaii and seen a couple of local surfers standing up — but stand-up surfing was still more of a rumour than a reality for most...2003, Louise Southerden, Surf's Up: The Girl's Guide to Surfing, page 13
    • A talented surfer and strong swimmer, and a fellow member of the Bronte Surf Club, he specialised in body surfing with a hand board.2013, Ian Wilson, Come a Little Bit Closer

Forms of bodysurf

third-person singular presentbodysurfs
present participlebodysurfing
past participlebodysurfed
pastbodysurfed
alternative formbody-surf
alternative formbody surf

Origin of bodysurf

From body + surf.

Words formed from bodysurf

Questions about bodysurf

What does bodysurf mean?
Bodysurf means to ride waves or surf without equipment, such as a surfboard.
What part of speech is bodysurf?
Bodysurf is a verb.
What is the past tense of bodysurf?
The past tense of bodysurf is bodysurfed.

Words near bodysurf in the dictionary

  1. bodystyle
  2. bodystyles
  3. bodysuit
  4. bodysuited
  5. bodysuits
  6. bodysurf
  7. bodysurfed
  8. bodysurfer
  9. bodysurfers
  10. bodysurfing
  11. bodysurfs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bodysurf (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bodysurf.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bodysurf. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.