Word.ws English Dictionary

skite

/skaɪt/

skite noun: a contemptible person. Also the alternative spelling of skete.

Noun (1)

skite (plural skites)

  1. A contemptible person.
    • When Carey told on Skin-the-Goat / O'Donnell caught him on the boat / He wished he'd never been afloat / The dirty skite.1958, George Desmond Hodnett, “Monto (Take Her Up to Monto)”

Verb (1)

skite (third-person singular simple present skites, present participle skiting, simple past and past participle skited)

  1. (archaic, vulgar) To defecate, to shit.
    • There is no need of wiping ones taile (said Gargantua), but when it is foule; foule it cannot be unlesse one have been a skiting; skite then we must before we wipe our tailes.1653, François Rabelais; Thomas Urquhart, transl., “How Gargantua's Wonderful Understanding Became Known to His Father Grangousier, by the Invention of a Torchecul or Wipebreech”, in The First Book...

Noun (2)

skite (plural skites)

  1. (obsolete) A sudden hit or blow; a glancing blow.
  2. A trick.
  3. (Ireland) A drinking binge.
    • I needed alcohol to stop my nerves rattling. This felt like the longest period I'd been without my drug of choice for at least three years. I needed to go on a skite.2008, Tony Black, Paying for It, London: Preface, →ISBN, page 214
  4. (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand) One who skites; a boaster.
    • [T]he Rooster was one of those fine, upstanding, bumptious skites who love to talk all day, in the heartiest manner, to total strangers while their wives do the washing.1918, Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding, page 74
  5. (Ireland) A whimsical or leisurely trip.
    • We're going on a skite to Dublin.

Verb (2)

skite (third-person singular simple present skites, present participle skiting, simple past and past participle skited)

  1. (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand) To boast.
    • You boast and skite from morn to night / And think you're very brave, / But the men who really did the job / Are dead and in their graves.a. 1918, “The Ragtime Army” [World War I Australian Army song], cited in Graham Seal, “The Singing Soldiers”, in Inventing Anzac: The Digger and National Mythology (UQP Australian Studies), St....
    • He still had bumfluff on his cheeks, he was that young. About once a month he used to shave it off, and come skiting about it. I smiled at the memory of him all lathered up, grinning at me through the mirror as he went to work on the bumfluff.1983, John Carroll, Token Soldiers, Boronia, Vic.: Wildgrass Books, →ISBN, page 247
  2. (uncommon) To skim or slide along a surface.
    • […] skiting down that steep slope. But it's one thing to slide down a steep slope and quite another thing to climb back up - as Mary Jane soon discovered. Try her hardest , she simply could not get up that hill; she slid down faster than she went up.2022(?), Clara Ingram Judson, Mary Jane at School
    • […] of rock shearing off and skiting down the cliff-face as a black guillotine blade.2024, Jen Hadfield, Storm Pegs: A Life Made in Shetland
  3. (Scotland, especially) To slip, such as on ice.
    • At this point I skited on a discarded banana and decided to use my eyes instead of my brains.1929, John Joy Bell, Meet Mr. Craw, page 25
    • ... skited on a particularly hazardous weet bit o' the harbour and fell flat in […]1993, New Writing Scotland
  4. To move swiftly; to move in leaps and bounds.
    • His very shuttle skytes boldly along, and clatters through in faithful time to the tune of his merrier shopmates!1880, William Thom, Rhymes and recollections of a hand-loom weaver. ed., with a biogr. sketch, by W. Skinner, page 8
    • ... flashy blades gae skytin' by, […]1889, Malcolm M'Lachlan Harper, The Bards of Galloway: A Collection of Poems, Songs, Ballads, &c., by Natives of Galloway, page 98
  5. To pop, to quickly or briefly make a trip to.
    • […] skiting over to Europe and back before you know it, taking notes on the way going and coming .1925, The Lariat, volumes 5-6, page 351
    • ... skiting over to Hartford City and back in a day. I don't suppose we could hear all of it, but we heard most of it. We turned the corner on Madison Street, came up Washington, got to the front of the house, and Grandfather stopped the[…]1956, Samuel Berder Rapport, Patricia Schartle, America Remembers; Our Best-loved Customs and Traditions
  6. (Scotland, slang) To drink a large amount of alcohol.

Also used as

skite is also the alternative spelling of skete.

Examples of skite in a sentence

  • Without wishing to skite, the only other accurate prediction on 2015 was penned here by your columnist last January when we accurately forecast that all the forecasts would be inaccurate.2016 January 4, Ian Verrender, “The crystal ball gazers got it all wrong in 2015 – don't expect better this year”, in Australian...
  • ... skited on the way and nearly took a tumble.1997, Flamingo Book of New Scottish Writing:
  • 'If ye'd rather, laddie, the dog will bring ye home,' […] 'Skite!' said Dick, with sullen scorn; but he went quietly after that.2022 September 16 [1901], Edward Dyson, The Gold-Stealers: A Story of Waddy, DigiCat:
  • ... skited over with empty suitcases for a shopping trip just before Christmas.2019 January 15, Claudia Carroll, Do You Want to Know a Secret?, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN:

Forms of skite

Noun
pluralskites
alternative formskyte
Verb
third-person singular presentskites
present participleskiting
past participleskited
pastskited

Origin of skite

From Middle English skit, from Old Norse *skitr, older form of skítr (“dung, faeces”), from Proto-Germanic *skitiz. Cognate with Old English sċite (“dung”). Doublet of shit and shite.

Inherited from Middle English skiten, from Old Norse skíta, from Proto-Germanic *skītaną, from Proto-Indo-European *skéydt. Doublet of shit and shite.

Inherited from Middle English *skiten, from Old Norse skýt-, present singular stem of skjóta (“to shoot”), from Proto-Germanic *skeutaną, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kewd-. Doublet of shoot.

Words formed from skite

Words that rhyme with skite

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about skite

What does skite mean?
Skite means a contemptible person.
How do you use skite in a sentence?
Without wishing to skite, the only other accurate prediction on 2015 was penned here by your columnist last January when we accurately forecast that all the forecasts would be inaccurate.
What part of speech is skite?
Skite can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce skite?
Skite is pronounced /skaɪt/.
What is the plural of skite?
The plural of skite is skites.

Words near skite in the dictionary

  1. skitched
  2. skitcher
  3. skitchers
  4. skitches
  5. skitching
  6. skite
  7. skite-the-gutter
  8. skited
  9. skites
  10. skiting
  11. skitrack

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: skite (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-skite.ogg.

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