Word.ws English Dictionary

skelly

/ˈskɛli/

skelly noun: a squint. Also the alternative form of skully.

Noun (1)

skelly (plural skellies)

  1. (Scotland, archaic) A squint.

Verb

skelly (third-person singular simple present skellies, present participle skellying, simple past and past participle skellied)

  1. (Scotland) To squint.
    • "It is he—it is the very man," said Bothwell, "skellies fearfully with one eye?"1816, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter IV, in Tales of My Landlord, […], volume II (Old Mortality), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for William Blackwood, […]...
  2. (Scotland) To look at

Noun (2)

skelly (plural skellies)

  1. (slang) A skeleton, especially a human one.
    • We went spelunking in some caves and got quite the scare when we found some skellies in there.

Proper noun capitalized: Skelly

Skelly (plural Skellys)

  1. A surname from Irish.

Also used as

skelly is also the alternative form of skully.

Forms of skelly

Noun
pluralskellies
Verb
third-person singular presentskellies
present participleskellying
past participleskellied
pastskellied
Proper noun
pluralSkellys

Origin of skelly

Probably of North Germanic origin, from Old Norse *skjelga ("to squint"; found only in the reflexive skjelgask (“to come askew; squint the eyes”)), from Proto-Germanic *skilgijaną (“to squint”), from Proto-Germanic *skelhaz, *skelhwaz, *skelgaz (“slanted; sloping; squinting”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kel- (“to bend; crook”). Compare Danish skele (“to squint”), Swedish skela (“to squint”), Scots skellie, scalie, skellice (“to squint; look to the side”), German schielen (“to squint”).

From a clipping of skeleton + -y (diminutive suffix).

Variant of skully.

Words formed from skelly

Questions about skelly

What does skelly mean?
Skelly means a squint.
What part of speech is skelly?
Skelly can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce skelly?
Skelly is pronounced /ˈskɛli/.
What is the plural of skelly?
The plural of skelly is skellies.

Words near skelly in the dictionary

  1. skellochs
  2. Skellow
  3. skells
  4. skellum
  5. skellums
  6. skelly
  7. skellying
  8. Skellys
  9. Skellytown
  10. skelm
  11. Skelmanthorpe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: skelly (page history and authors); Skelly (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.

Last updated:

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