skimming

skimming is the present participle and gerund of skim.

skimming is the ellipsis of price skimming.

skimming is the ellipsis of cream skimming.

Noun

skimming (countable and uncountable, plural skimmings)

Something skimmed from a surface etc.
- aluminium skimmings
- sorghum syrup skimmings
A motion or action that skims.
- I was forced, too, to wonder if my previous world-views had not been too pallid, too superficial, and altogether too 'rational' — mere skimmings or skatings on the surface of reality[…]1973, Oliver Sacks, Awakenings
(uncountable) The sport of skimboarding.
(crime) The act of fraudulently copying a magnetic stripe from a magnetic stripe card, such as found on credit cards and bank cards, through the use of a skimmer

skim (third-person singular simple present skims, present participle skimming, simple past and past participle skimmed)

(intransitive) To pass lightly; to glide along in an even, smooth course; to glide along near the surface.
- Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, / Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.1711 May, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Criticism, London: […] W[illiam] Lewis […]; and sold by W[illiam] Taylor […], T[homas] Osborn[e] […], and J[ohn] Graves […], →OCLC
(transitive) To pass near the surface of; to brush the surface of; to glide swiftly along the surface of.
- Homer describes Mercury as flinging himself from the top of Olympus, and skimming the surface of the ocean.1817, William Hazlitt, The Round Table
To hasten along with superficial attention.
- They skim over a science in a very night superficial survey.1741, I[saac] Watts, The Improvement of the Mind: Or, A Supplement to the Art of Logick: […], London: […] James Brackstone, […], →OCLC
To put on a finishing coat of plaster.
- Ceilings are lined with fibrous asbestos, the internal plastering being reduced to skimming alone.1924, The Architect, volume 112, page 291
(transitive) To throw an object so it bounces on water.
- skimming stones
(intransitive) To ricochet.

price skimming (uncountable)

A price-setting strategy in which a new product or service is offered at the highest practical price (to capture consumer surplus or exploit a monopolistic position), and that price is then lowered over time.

plural	skimmings

From skim + -ing.

What does skimming mean?: Skimming means something skimmed from a surface etc.
What is skimming the present participle and gerund of?: Skimming is the present participle and gerund of skim.
What part of speech is skimming?: Skimming is a noun.
What is the plural of skimming?: The plural of skimming is skimmings.

Adapted from Wiktionary: skimming (page history and authors); skim (page history and authors); price skimming (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: 2026-09-02

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