piste

Piste is a term borrowed from French that generally means track, trail, or course. In English usage, it most commonly refers to a ski slope in a mountain resort and, in French or bilingual contexts, to a single audio track on a recording. The word can also appear in discussions of aviation in its French sense of runway, though this usage is less common in English.

In skiing, a piste is a marked, maintained slope prepared for downhill skiing. Pistes are typically patrolled and signposted, with grooming by snowcats to keep the surface smooth. They are distinguished from off-piste terrain, which is ungroomed, unpatrolled, and used at the skier’s own risk. Piste difficulty is often indicated by color codes or signs, with green or blue representing easier runs and red or black indicating more challenging ones. Resort maps, lift networks, and safety rules are designed around the on-piste/off-piste distinction, though conditions can change with weather, snow quality, and traffic.

In audio and media contexts, piste denotes a track or recording, such as a single audio channel or song on a multitrack project. This usage is more common in French-language materials and in discussions that reflect bilingual terminology, where the English equivalent is typically track or recording.

Other uses are primarily geographic or administrative in French, such as airstrips or runways (piste d’atterrissage), but these senses are rarely encountered in standard English-language writing.