skiff
/skɪf/
skiff noun: a small flat-bottomed open boat with a pointed bow and square stern.
Noun (1)
skiff (plural skiffs)
- A small flat-bottomed open boat with a pointed bow and square stern.
- Old Applegate, in the stern, just set and looked at me, and Lord James, amidship, waved both arms and kept hollering for help. 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
- As Hiro is entering their neighborhood, he sees men running down the undulating pontoon bridge that serves as the main street, carrying guns and knives. The local constabulary. More men of the same description emerge from the byways and skiffs and sampans, joining them.1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, page 385
- Any of various types of boats small enough for sailing or rowing by one person.
- I went alone into a Shepherd's boat,
A skiff that to a willow-tree was tied
Within a rocky cave, its usual home […]1799, William Wordsworth, The Two-Part Prelude, Book I - 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
- I went alone into a Shepherd's boat,
Verb (1)
skiff (third-person singular simple present skiffs, present participle skiffing, simple past and past participle skiffed)
- To navigate in a skiff.
Noun (2)
skiff (plural skiffs)
- A 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
- A (typically light) dusting of snow or ice (or dust, etc) (on ground, water, trees, etc).
- At sunrise there was a slight skiff of ice on some water in a bucket; […]1877, George Monro Grant, Ocean to Ocean: Sandford Fleming's Expedition Through Canada in 1872, page 131
- There was a light skiff of snow on the ground. The air was filled with flying flakes, which stung his cheeks sharply. A little streak of red was beginning to show in the east, and somewhere, far away, he heard a chicken crow sleepily.1899, Clara Vawter, Of Such is the Kingdom..., page 72
Verb (2)
skiff (third-person singular simple present skiffs, present participle skiffing, simple past and past participle skiffed)
- To 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
Noun (3)
skiff (plural skiffs)
- An 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
- The sequence of the 3-year pruning cycle is light pruning; light skiff; and deep skiff[…]2019, Mirza Hasanuzzaman, Agronomic Crops: Volume 1: Production Technologies, Springer, page 463
Verb (3)
skiff (third-person singular simple present skiffs, present participle skiffing, simple past and past participle skiffed)
- To 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
Proper noun capitalized: Skiff
Skiff (plural Skiffs)
- A surname.
skiff meaning in Urdu, Malayalam, Kannada and Persian
skiff in Urdu
- ڈونگی
skiff in Malayalam
- ഒരു ചെറിയ ഭാരംകുറഞ്ഞ ബോട്ട്, ചെറു തോണി, വഞ്ചി, ഓടിവള്ളം
skiff in Kannada
- ಕಿರುಹಡಗು
skiff in Persian
- Any of various types of boats small enough for sailing or rowing by one person
- زورق zowraq
Examples of skiff in a sentence
- 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:
- A lashing skiff of rain sheeted across the desert, a gift from the heavens that cooled my skin and allowed some color to return to the world.2019, Craig Johnson, Depth of Winter: A Longmire Mystery, Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 246:
- 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:
Forms of skiff
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | skiffs |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | skiffs |
| present participle | skiffing |
| past participle | skiffed |
| past | skiffed |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Skiffs |
Origin of skiff
From Middle English skif, from Middle French esquif, from Old Italian schifo (“small boat”), from Lombardic skif (“boat”), from Proto-Germanic *skipą (“boat, ship”). Doublet of ship.
From Scots skiff (“light shower of rain or snow”), from skiff (“move lightly”); compare the derivative skiffle (whence English skiffle) and (English skift (“light dusting of snow”) from) Scots skift (“light shower of snow”), from skift (“move lightly”), perhaps related to shift/Old Norse skipta, or perhaps an onomatopoeic formation.
Words formed from skiff
Words that rhyme with skiff
Questions about skiff
- What does skiff mean?
- Skiff means a small flat-bottomed open boat with a pointed bow and square stern.
- What is skiff in Urdu?
- Skiff in Urdu is ڈونگی. See Skiff meaning in Urdu.
- How do you use skiff in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is skiff?
- Skiff can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce skiff?
- Skiff is pronounced /skɪf/.
- What is the plural of skiff?
- The plural of skiff is skiffs.
Words near skiff in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: skiff (page history and authors); Skiff (page history and authors); skiff (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); skiff (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); skiff (Kannada Wiktionary) (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-skiff.ogg.
Cite this entry: “skiff.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/skiff. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.