Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use skiff in a sentence

24 example sentences · noun, verb

Skiff means a small flat-bottomed open boat with a pointed bow and square stern. Example: “A skiff of rain blew into the shed and the two men moved their chairs back.”

Examples of skiff by meaning

nounA small flat-bottomed open boat with a pointed bow and square stern.

  • I took a couple of everlasting big strokes and managed to grab hold of the skiff's rail, close to the stern.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
  • More men of the same description emerge from the byways and skiffs and sampans, joining them.1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, page 385

nounAny of various types of boats small enough for sailing or rowing by one person.

  • Graceful old houses stand by the edge of the Great Ouse and gaze down at the houseboats, skiffs and motor-cruisers that moor there.1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications, page 223, about Hemingford Grey

nounA light, fleeting shower of rain or snow, or gust of wind, etc.

  • A skiff of rain blew into the shed and the two men moved their chairs back.
  • A little on again, off again, skiff of rain made the road slippery in spots.2013, J. T. Brewer, Stewards of the White Circle: Calm Before the Storm
  • Meadowlarks are in full voice, as are all manner of ducks, geese and gulls; with just a skiff of wind, sound travels a long way on mornings such as this.2019 May 5, Brad Dokken, “More bust than boom for dwindling prairie chickens in Grand Forks County”, in Grand Forks Herald

nounA (typically light) dusting of snow or ice (or dust, etc) (on ground, water, trees, etc).

  • To create a light skiff of snow on a six-foot noble fir, double the recipe.1999, Sara Perry, Christmastime Treats: Recipes and Crafts for the Whole FamilyA Holiday Celebrations Book, Chronicle Books, →ISBN
  • A thick skiff of dust covered the contents of the room and revealed hundreds of tracks made by very large rodents.2001, Dave Gilham, Hell 7 New York 0, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 53
  • Fall was everywhere from the yellow aspens, to the skiff of ice on the beaver ponds in the morning.2001, Wayde Bulow, Lure of the Mountains: The Frontier Life of a Mountain Man, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 176

verbTo fall lightly or briefly, and lightly cover the ground (etc).

  • We must be constantly alert to increased accident potentials in taxiing, takeoff, and landings on ice-glazed and snow-skiffed runways.1957, Combat Crew: Magazine of the Strategic Air Command, page 3
  • The sharp wind divides the dense fur of their winter coats while they survey the snow-skiffed ground of their silent town.1981, United States Government Printing Office, Devils Tower, Government Printing Office, published 1985, →ISBN, page 50
  • The first year I stayed on 'til snow skiffed the highways & we had to burn the frost out of the ditchline with coal.1986, Waves

nounAn act of slightly pruning tea bushes, placing new leaves at a convenient height without removing much woody growth.

  • In the fourth year, "light skiff" pruning removes just the uppermost growth.2001, Piya Chatterjee, A Time for Tea: Women, Labor, and Post/Colonial Politics on an Indian Plantation, page 173

verbTo cut (a tea bush) to maintain the plucking table.

  • Skiffing is the lightest form of pruning involving as it does removal of a certain amount of growth above the previous pruning level.2016, H. Panda, The Complete Book on Cultivation and Manufacture of Tea (2nd Revised Edition), page 202

More sentences with skiff

  • One had jumped onto a submerged waterstep and was tying up the skiff.2018, Pauline Gedge, The Oasis. From the entry waterstep
  • Jon boat, drift boat, canoe, skiff, skanoe, kayak, SUP board, low side, high side, prop, jet oars, cooler, anchors, trailer.2020 October 1, Kip Vieth, “10 A Different View”, in Tom Rosenbauer, editor, The Orvis Guide to Muskies on the Fly, Rowman & Littlefield…. From the entry skanoe
  • Most Fishneck watermen oystered in winter, using the same small skiffs from which they potted crabs in summer.1986, Carolyn Ellis, Fisher Folk: Two Communities on Chesapeake Bay, University Press of Kentucky, →ISBN, page 77. From the entry pot
  • French Pete let go the main-sheet, lost steerageway as he rounded up alongside the motionless skiff, and dragged Joe out.1902, Jack London, “chapter XII”, in The Cruise of the Dazzler. From the entry steerageway
  • When he lowered the skiff they lay gaping on the boards under a sun that withered them visibly, Suttree gripped his forepockets, searching.2010, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree. From the entry forepocket
  • Unlike drifting, set netting is done in a small skiff, not unlike a Boston Whaler, usually between fifteen and twenty feet in length.2008, Bill Carter, Red Summer, →ISBN, pages 15–16. From the entry set netting
  • This is the "flattie" model of this skiff — there was also a V-bottomed version similar to the m odified sharpie of Figure 6-4.1993 -, Reuel B. Parker -, The Sharpie Book, →ISBN, page 106. From the entry flattie
  • The skiff at the bank bore a strange rigging of uprights and crosspoles and a travis bar with lines and hooks hanging from it.1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree. From the entry travis
  • The author disembarks from a Lake Champlain skiff at Burlington, which resembles a fishing-town on the seacoast, although there is a sickly, unbriny smell about.1965, Robert L. Gale, Plots and characters in the fiction and sketches of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Archon Books, page 154. From the entry unbriny
  • He climbed from the skiff and tied up at a stob and labored up the thick grassless bank toward the arches where the bridge went to earth.1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, Random House, page 11. From the entry stob

Meaning of skiff

  1. noun A small flat-bottomed open boat with a pointed bow and square stern.
  2. noun Any of various types of boats small enough for sailing or rowing by one person.
  3. verb To navigate in a skiff.

Full definition of skiff

Questions about skiff in a sentence

How do you use skiff in a sentence?
Skiff is used as a noun and verb. For example: “A skiff of rain blew into the shed and the two men moved their chairs back.”
What is a short sentence with skiff?
“In the fourth year, "light skiff" pruning removes just the uppermost growth.”
What does skiff mean?
Skiff means a small flat-bottomed open boat with a pointed bow and square stern.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: skiff (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use skiff in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/skiff. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.