While at first it would be a sled to slide through the snow, over time it became a game to slide down a ramp, which can have different heights and end up in the water, the sand, a baseball player, . . . The inventor seems to have been the American Herbert Selner who built it next to a lake in Minnesota and named it Water-Toboggan-Slide. Actually, the toboggan is not English but is taken from the Canadian French tabagnne, an interpretation of the Inuktitut topakan with which the native Algonquin Micmac called their sleds. See inuk . It is also used as a metaphor for a somewhat slower descent of position than a free fall, but just as inevitable.
