Word.ws English Dictionary

skelp

/skɛlp/

skelp verb: to beat or slap with the hand.

Verb (1)

skelp (third-person singular simple present skelps, present participle skelping, simple past and past participle skelped)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, transitive) To beat or slap with the hand.
    • But Mistress Munro would up and be at the door and in she'd yank Andy by the lug, and some said she'd take down his breeks and skelp him, but maybe that was a lie.1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 24
    • My stomach was just sore and I was rubbing it. But he just reached and skelped me on the leg and I fell down and he waited for me to get up and he skelped me on the b*m.2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin, published 2009, page 67
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, transitive) To beat, pound or hammer.
    • ... hither blith comes tinker John, Who skelps the kettle, and sweet tunes the drone, […]1804, George Galloway, The Battle of Luncarty, Or the Valiant Hays Triumphant Over the Danish Invaders, page 15
    • "Fa' in! fa' in!" he's yelpin : The fifes are whuslin' loud and clear, An ' sair the drums they're skelpin'.1819, Newcastle dialect, A collection of songs, comic and satirical, chiefly in the Newcastle dialect. By mess. Thompson, Shield and others, page 17
  3. (Scotland) To drive by blows; to drive (hard), to cause to move rapidly.
    • My fair opponents skelp me aff,[…]1861, Roger Quinn, The Heather Lintie: Being the Poetical Pieces, Spiritual and Temporal, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, page 112
    • We'll skelp him to hell, / where his frien's will him crown,[…]1876, John Mactaggart, The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, page 126
  4. (Ireland, Northern England, Scotland, intransitive) To move briskly along; to run.
    • […] the lassie became extremely wild, ran like a hare, and […] skelped home in a crack, on the "light side of her foot," to Barniewater.1824, John Mactaggart, The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia: or the Original Antiquated and Natural Curiosities of the South of Scotland, page 47
    • ... that little plaguy breed / That skelp aboot in youngster's hair.1843, Thomas Wilson, The Pitman's Pay; and Other Poems, page 49
  5. (intransitive) To rain heavily; (of rain) to fall.
    • ... more than halfway to the summit / A rain squall down on them did plummet, / Skelping down harder by the minute / We'll wait […](Can we date this quote?), John McCuaig, The Sennachie, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 158
    • "Lord Harry only knows what sort of storm is skelping down." They two knew what sort of storm it was, when they reached the long pasture that raked up into the Logie highroad. The wind came, and the snow, and biting hail - came ravening on the track of the wild-geese[…]2021 August 30, Henry James Halliwell Sutcliffe, Storm: A Tale of Nature's Wrath and Human Resilience, Good Press

Noun (1)

skelp (plural skelps)

  1. A blow; a smart stroke, especially with the hand; a smack.
    • They came crack down on their bottoms with a loud skelp on the seats.1833, Michael Scott, Tom Cringle's Log
    • [T]the farther they got an the bridge, the loudher he yelled; till at last Mick cud hould out no longer; so givin' him a skelp o' the whip he had in his han', "Divil choke you, you crukked brat," sez he; "will you nivir stop bawlin'? a body can't hear their ears for you."1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 526
  2. (Scotland) A squall; a heavy fall of rain.
  3. (Scotland) A large portion.
    • Great skelps of riotous colors followed each other across the window-framed screen, pounding upon bleak northern hearts as the surf pounds upon a rocky headland.1921, The Smart Set: A Magazine of Cleverness, page 4
    • ... great skelps of centuries together until they're almost in the same skin, growing into each other, shrinking to each other's sizes and shapes, speaking with one voice, clinging fast together, dying days or hours apart.2017 July 4, Donal Ryan, All We Shall Know: A Novel, Penguin, →ISBN, page 64

Noun (2)

skelp (plural skelps)

  1. A narrow strip of rolled or forged metal, ready to be bent and welded to form a pipe.
    • […] he then heats one half of the skelp at a time in an air furnace, or other fire, and having so heated it, he passes the skelp between a pair of grooved rollers placed at the mouth of the furnace, for the purpose of uniting (or marrying, as he terms it) the edges of the metal ; that is, causing...1836, William Newton, editor, The London Journal of Arts and Sciences; and Repertory of Patent Inventions, pages 407–8

Verb (2)

skelp (third-person singular simple present skelps, present participle skelping, simple past and past participle skelped)

  1. (transitive) To form (a plate or bar of metal, etc.) into a skelp.
  2. (transitive) To bend round (a skelp) in tube-making.

Examples of skelp in a sentence

  • ... sewing, hammering, and "skelping away at the leather."1877, Samuel Smiles, Life of a Scotch Naturalist: Thomas Edward, Associate of the Linnean Society, page 183:
  • A byke was regarded as a glorious capture, not only for the sake of the honey, but because of the fun the boys had in skelpin' out the bees.1879, Samuel Smiles, Life of a Scotch Naturalist, Thomas Edward: Associate of the Linnean Society, page 17:
  • ... up cam my young Lord Evandale, skelping as fast as his horse could trot, and twenty red-coats at his back.1855, Walter Scott, Waverly novels, library edition, page 7:
  • I saw Pat skelping along without a cap or a hat on his sun-burnt hair.1875, Patrick Kennedy, The Banks of the Boro: A Chronicle of the County of Wexford, page 105:

Forms of skelp

Verb
third-person singular presentskelps
present participleskelping
past participleskelped
pastskelped
Noun
pluralskelps

Origin of skelp

From Middle English skelpen, probably of imitative origin. The noun is from Middle English skelp, from the verb.

Words formed from skelp

Questions about skelp

What does skelp mean?
Skelp means to beat or slap with the hand.
How do you use skelp in a sentence?
... sewing, hammering, and "skelping away at the leather."
What part of speech is skelp?
Skelp can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce skelp?
Skelp is pronounced /skɛlp/.
What is the past tense of skelp?
The past tense of skelp is skelped.

Words near skelp in the dictionary

  1. skelm
  2. Skelmanthorpe
  3. Skelmersdale
  4. skelms
  5. skelotogenesis
  6. skelp
  7. skelped
  8. skelper
  9. skelpers
  10. skelping
  11. skelpings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: skelp (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-skelp.wav.

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