Word.ws English Dictionary

clinging to the skirts of

clinging to the skirts of is the present participle and gerund of cling to the skirts of.

Meaning of cling to the skirts of

Verb

cling to the skirts of (third-person singular simple present clings to the skirts of, present participle clinging to the skirts of, simple past and past participle clung to the skirts of)

  1. To depend upon and be unwilling to relinquish.
    • Idleness is his chief good, and pauperism and theft are for the race not an unwelcome means of attaining their object. The vis inertia of the black blood is so great, that even a large mixture of white blood will overcome it only so far as to induce the individual to perform menial offices...1860, Thomas Prentice Kettell, Southern Wealth and Northern Profits As Exhibited in Statistical Facts and Official Figures
  2. To be closely associated with or proximate to.
    • Sometimes we came upon a station close by the bank, clinging to the skirts of the Unknown, and the white men rushing out of a tumble-down hovel, with great gestures of joy and surprise and welcome, seemed very strange—had the appearance of being held there captive by a spell.1899 (please specify the page), Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part

Questions about clinging to the skirts of

What is clinging to the skirts of the present participle and gerund of?
Clinging to the skirts of is the present participle and gerund of cling to the skirts of.

Words near clinging to the skirts of in the dictionary

  1. clingily
  2. clinginess
  3. clinging
  4. clinging on
  5. clinging to
  6. clinging to the skirts of
  7. clinging vine
  8. clinging vines
  9. clingingly
  10. clingingness
  11. clingings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clinging to the skirts of (page history and authors); cling to the skirts of (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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