Word.ws English Dictionary

skip

/skɪp/

skip verb: to move by hopping on alternate feet. Also the abbreviation of skipper.

skip: to move by hopping on alternate feet
Image: HelenOnline, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb (1)

skip (third-person singular simple present skips, present participle skipping, simple past and past participle skipped)

  1. (intransitive) To move by hopping on alternate feet.
    • She will skip from one end of the sidewalk to the other.
  2. (intransitive) To leap about lightly.
    • The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, / Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?1733, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Man. […], (please specify |epistle=I to IV), London: […] J[ohn] Wilford, […], →OCLC
    • So she drew her mother away skipping, dancing, and frisking fantastically.1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 10, in The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC
  3. (intransitive) To skim, ricochet or bounce over a surface.
    • The rock will skip across the pond.
    • After Essien's poor attempt flew into the stands, Rodrigo Moreno - Bolton's on-loan winger from Benfica who was making his full Premier League debut - nearly exposed the Blues with a lovely ball for Johan Elmander, but it just skipped away from his team-mate's toes.2010 December 29, Chris Whyatt, “Chelsea 1 - 0 Bolton”, in BBC
  4. (transitive) To throw (something), making it skim, ricochet, or bounce over a surface.
    • I bet I can skip this rock to the other side of the pond.
  5. (transitive) To disregard, miss or omit part of a continuation (some item or stage).
    • My heart will skip a beat.
    • He skipped the second question and moved on.
  6. (informal, transitive) Not to attend (some event, especially a class or a meeting).
    • Yeah, I really should go to the quarterly meeting but I think I'm going to skip it.
    Synonyms:
    play hooky
  7. (informal, transitive) To leave, especially in a sudden and covert manner.
    • to skip the country
    • a customer who skipped town without paying her hotel bill
  8. To leap lightly over.
    • to skip the rope
  9. To jump rope.
    • The girls were skipping in the playground.
  10. To cause the stylus to jump back to the previous loop of the record's groove, continuously repeating that part of the sound, as a result of excessive scratching or wear. (of a phonograph record)
  11. (crochet) To pass by a stitch as if it were not there, continuing with the next stitch.
  12. To have insufficient ink transfer.
    Antonyms:
    stack

Noun (1)

skip (plural skips)

  1. A leaping or jumping movement; the action of one who skips.
  2. The act of passing over an interval from one thing to another; an omission of a part.
    1. A trick allowing the player to proceed to a later section of the game without playing through a section that was intended to be mandatory.
  3. A passage from one sound to another by more than a degree at once.
  4. A person who attempts to disappear so as not to be found.
    • Tracking down debtors is a big part of a skip tracer's job. That's the case because deadbeats who haven't paid their bills and have disappeared are the most common type of skips.2012, Susan Nash, Skip Tracing Basics and Beyond, page 19
  5. skywave propagation
  6. (informal) A song, typically one on an album, that is not worth listening to.

Noun (2)

skip (plural skips)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK) A large container for waste, designed to be lifted onto the back of a truck to remove it along with its contents, or to be picked up by hydraulic arms so that its contents can be dumped into the truck.
    Synonyms:
    dumpster
  2. A transportation container in a mine, usually for ore or mullock.
    • Beside it was a great engine which worked a continuous steel rope on which the skips were fastened which drew up the débris by successive stages from the bottom of the shaft.1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, When the World Screamed
  3. A skip car.
  4. (Scotland, UK, dialectal) A skep, or basket, such as a creel or a handbasket.
    • In a panic he pushed the prostesting Catweazle inside an empty clothes skip and sat down on the lid just as his father and Sam came in.1970, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 127
  5. A wheeled basket chiefly used in textile factories.
  6. (sugar manufacture) A charge of syrup in the pans.
  7. A beehive made of woven straw, wicker, etc.
    Synonyms:
    skep

Verb (2)

skip (third-person singular simple present skips, present participle skipping, simple past and past participle skipped)

  1. (transitive) To place (an item) in a skip (large container for waste).

Noun (3)

skip (plural skips)

  1. The player who calls the shots and traditionally throws the last two rocks.
  2. (bowls) The captain of a bowls team, who directs the team's tactics and rolls the side's last wood, so as to be able to retrieve a difficult situation if necessary.
  3. (informal, scouting) The scoutmaster of a troop of scouts (youth organization).

Verb (3)

skip (third-person singular simple present skips, present participle skipping, simple past and past participle skipped)

  1. (sports such as curling) To act as skipper, or captain, of a team.

Noun (4)

skip (plural skips)

  1. (Australia, slang) An Australian of Anglo-Celtic descent.
    • Effie: How did you find the second, the defacto, and what nationality is she?
      Barber: She is Australian.
      Effie: Is she? Gone for a skip. You little radical you.2001, Effie (character played by Mary Coustas), Effie: Just Quietly (TV series), Episode: Nearest and Dearest

Noun (5)

skip (plural skips)

  1. (historical, Trinity College, Dublin) A college servant.
    • Behind the Counter stood a complaisant Spark, who I observ'd shew'd as much Breeding in the sale of a Penny-worth of Tobacco, and the change of a Shilling, as a Courtier's Footman when he meets his Brother Skip in the middle of Covent-Garden; and is so very dexterous in discharge of his Occupation...1703, Edward Ward, The London-spy Compleat, 5th edition, volume 1, part 7, published 1713, page 157
    • He constitutes, probably, the identical exception which Sir Boyle Roche had in his mind's eye, when he broached his famous problem, that "a man cannot be in two places at once, barring he is a bird." The skip, or according to the Oxford etymology, the man-vulture, is not fit for his calling who...1842 October, Billy Sheridan, “Reminiscences of College Life”, in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, page 682

Noun (6)

skip (plural skips)

  1. (slang) A skip-level manager; the boss of one's boss.
    • My skip is helpful when my team lead is being uptight.
    Synonyms:
    grandboss

Proper noun capitalized: Skip

Skip

  1. A male given name from Old Norse.

Also used as

skip is also the abbreviation of skipper.

skip meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Telugu and Malayalam

skip in Hindi

स्किप करें

skip in Marathi

वगळा

skip in Telugu

దాటవేయండి, దాటవేయి, దాటవేయడానికి

skip in Malayalam

സ്കിപ് ചെയ്യുക
More languagesFewer languages
skip in Kannada
ಸ್ಕಿಪ್ ಮಾಡಿ
skip in Gujarati
સ્કિપ કરો
skip in Odia
ସ୍କିପ୍ କରନ୍ତୁ
skip in Nepali
स्किप गर्नुहोस्, स्किप गर्न

Examples of skip in a sentence

  • The boy took a skip and a jump down the lane.
  • The expresses skipped my station, so I had to take a local.
  • It took everything in me to resist the temptation to skip work on my birthday.

All 40 example sentences with skip

Synonyms of skip

Antonyms

Forms of skip

Verb
third-person singular presentskips
present participleskipping
past participleskipped
pastskipped
second-person singular present (archaic)skippest
second-person singular past (archaic)skippedst
third-person singular present (archaic)skippeth
Noun
pluralskips

Past tense of skip: skipped

Plural of skip: skips

Origin of skip

From Middle English skippen, skyppen, of North Germanic origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *skupjaną, perhaps related to *skeubaną (“to drive, push”), iterative *skuppōną (“to push/move repeatedly, skip”), from Proto-Indo-European *skewbʰ- (“to push, throw, shake”). Related to Icelandic skopa (“to take a run”), Old Swedish skuppa (“to skip”), modern dialectal Swedish skopa, skimpa (“to skip, leap”), and English shove. See also dialectal English skimp (“to mock”) (Etymology 1), considered by some to be related.

From Middle English skep, skeppe, from Old English sceppe, from Old Norse skeppa, skjappa (“basket, bushel, measure”), perhaps from Middle Low German scheppe (“a unit of weight”), perhaps related to Middle Low German schēpel (“buschel, measurement for grain”), German Scheffel (“bushel”). These could all ultimately be related to *skap (“shape”).

Late Middle English skipper, borrowed from Middle Dutch and Middle Low German schipper (“captain”), earlier "seaman", from schip (“ship”).

Words formed from skip

Phrases with skip

Words that rhyme with skip

39 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about skip

What does skip mean?
Skip means to move by hopping on alternate feet.
What is skip in Hindi?
Skip in Hindi is स्किप करें. See Skip meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is skip?
Skip can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce skip?
Skip is pronounced /skɪp/.
What is the past tense of skip?
The past tense of skip is skipped.

Words near skip in the dictionary

  1. skiophilous
  2. skiophyte
  3. skiophytes
  4. skioring
  5. skios
  6. skip
  7. skip a beat
  8. skip bleach
  9. skip bomber
  10. skip bombers
  11. skip bombing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: skip (page history and authors); Skip (page history and authors); skip (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); skip (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); skip (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); skip (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); skip (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); skip (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); skip (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); skip (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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-skip.ogg.

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