Word.ws English Dictionary

skittle

/ˈskɪtəl/

skittle noun: one of the wooden targets used in skittles.

skittle: one of the wooden targets used in skittles
Image: Kokai, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

skittle (plural skittles)

  1. One of the wooden targets used in skittles.
    • By the afternoon it seemed as if the storm had passed and that frost was setting in; but in the evening the wind rose to gale force, bringing telegraph poles down like skittles and tangling power and telephone lines.1960 March, “The January blizzard in the North-East of Scotland”, in Trains Illustrated, page 137

Verb

skittle (third-person singular simple present skittles, present participle skittling, simple past and past participle skittled)

  1. (intransitive) To play skittles.
  2. (transitive) (with down) To squander one's money.
  3. (transitive) (sometimes with out) To rapidly bowl out a succession of batsmen.
    1. (figuratively, transitive) To defeat easily.
  4. (transitive) To knock down (skittles).

skittle meaning in Tamil

skittle in Tamil

மரப்பந்தாட்ட வகையில்

Examples of skittle in a sentence

  • His team was skittled out for 34.
  • Trans people I knew—the cultists! —had insisted that the “titty skittles” would make my breasts grow.
  • I needed to relieve my stress and have my skittles party in peace.

All 10 example sentences with skittle

Forms of skittle

Noun
pluralskittles
Verb
third-person singular presentskittles
present participleskittling
past participleskittled
pastskittled

Origin of skittle

Origin unknown. Perhaps of North Germanic origin, from Old Norse skutill (“bolt, harpoon”), related to skjóta (“to shoot”), but the OED dismisses this connection as conjecture. The Old Norse word is related to Swedish and Danish skyttel (“shuttle, child's toy”). Compare also Old English sċytel (“a dart, bolt”). More at shuttle.

Words formed from skittle

Phrases with skittle

Words that rhyme with skittle

2 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about skittle

What does skittle mean?
Skittle means one of the wooden targets used in skittles.
What is skittle in Tamil?
Skittle in Tamil is மரப்பந்தாட்ட வகையில். See Skittle meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is skittle?
Skittle can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce skittle?
Skittle is pronounced /ˈskɪtəl/.
What is the plural of skittle?
The plural of skittle is skittles.

Words near skittle in the dictionary

  1. skittery
  2. skitting
  3. skittish
  4. skittishly
  5. skittishness
  6. skittle
  7. skittle alley
  8. skittle alleys
  9. skittle out
  10. skittle-dog
  11. skittle-dogs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: skittle (page history and authors); skittle (Tamil 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.

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

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