skive
/ˈskaɪv/
skive verb: to avoid one's lessons or work (chiefly at school or university); shirk.
Verb (1)
skive (third-person singular simple present skives, present participle skiving, simple past and past participle skived)
- To avoid one's lessons or work (chiefly at school or university); shirk.
- Truancies, rather bewilderingly, have risen among children on the programme; the government hopes this is because children skive more as they get older.2006, The Economist, Young offenders: Arrested development
- Work experience as an arsey teenager is pretty straightforward: disappear into the storeroom, smoke a few cigarettes, text your mates and watch the minute hand tick slowly by. If there's nowhere suitable to hide, all you need is a vacant computer and you can chat to your skiving associate in the...2007 April 30, Jon Bentham, “How to...... do work experience”, in The Guardian
- Synonyms:
- skive off, skip, play hooky, play truant
Noun (1)
skive (plural skives)
- Something very easy, where one can slack off without penalty.
- Mr Smith's history classes are a total skive.
- An act of avoiding lessons or work.
- I got the bus to school, and the driver gave me the eye, thinking I was on the skive, and I started to explain that there was something up with my head, but then I couldn't be bothered.2007, Anthony McGowan, Henry Tumour, →ISBN, page 8
- Another school skive! I only realised this when my dentist's receptionist told me to expect a fair wait till I could be seen.2011, Catherine Forde, Sugarcoated, →ISBN
Noun (2)
skive (plural skives)
- A rotating iron disk coated with oil and diamond dust used to polish the facets of a diamond.
- This accident sometimes occasions a flaw in the diamond, and always damages the skive, by tearing up its surface.1820, Robert Jameson, A System of Mineralogy, in which Minerals are Arranged According to the Natural History Method, page 18
- When the cut diamond is fixed in the dop, and that is adjusted in the tongs, the stone is placed upon the skive, which, being set in motion, if the diamond be examined in the course of from ten to fifteen minutes time, the facet will appear to have lost a part of the gray colour it had obtained...1827, Thomas Gill, Gill's technological Repository; or Discoveries and Improvements in the Useful Arts, page 10
- An angled cut or bevel at the edge of something.
- There would be no need for medial heel skive and the heel cup can be of normal depth.2004, Alon Marcus, Foundations for Integrative Musculoskeletal Medicine, →ISBN, page 534
- The angle and the depth of skives should be specified.2010, Paul Frowen, Maureen O'Donnell, J. Gordon Burrow, Neale's Disorders of the Foot, →ISBN, page 446
Verb (2)
skive (third-person singular simple present skives, present participle skiving, simple past and past participle skived)
- To pare or shave off the rough or thick parts of.
- In the leather industry skive has another connotation, concerning splitting the skin perpendicularly to its thickness into thin layers. Imagine now being able to skive at the nanoscale.2009, Geoffrey A. Ozin, André C. Arsenault, Ludovico Cademartiri, Nanochemistry: A Chemical Approach to Nanomaterials, →ISBN, page 99
- Following the photo above from top to bottom, round off each end and skive the flesh side then using an old chisel the same width of the lace, cut a hole – open this out and thread each lace into the opposing hole – pull tight gently and flatten with a rubber hammer or other item, but gently.2011, Paul Carpenter, The Leather lace Bullwhip, →ISBN, page 31
skive meaning in Malayalam and Kannada
skive in Malayalam
- play truant, malinger, truant
- ജോലി ഒഴിവാക്കുക, ജോലിസ്ഥലത്തുനിന്നു മാറി നിൽക്കുക, രോഗം നടിക്കുക, ഒഴിഞ്ഞുകളയുക, ചുമതലയിൽനിന്നു സൂത്രത്തിലൊഴിഞ്ഞുമാറുക, കർത്തവ്യവിമുഖനാകുക
skive in Kannada
- ಕೆಲಸಕ್ಕೆ ತಪ್ಪಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳು, ಕಳ್ಳತಪ್ಪಿಸಿಕೊ, ಕರ್ತವ್ಯದಿಂದ ಪಾಲುಮಾರು, ಹೆರೆ
Examples of skive in a sentence
- But at least they preserved the idea that books were important and that reading and writing were more than just a skive for people too weedy to hack at one another with swords.2011, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, Terry Pratchett, The Science Of Discworld II: The Globe, →ISBN, page 202:
- There is room on the skive for three or four Diamonds at the same time ; and, to give each its proper share of attention, is as much as one person can well manage.1838, Lewis Feuchtwanger, A Treatise on Gems: In Reference to Their Practical and Scientific Value, page 36:
- The skive may be gradually brought to a "feather edge" in such a manner that when turned in it may, together with the leather of the body, be of the substance of the original.2013, F. Y. Golding, The Manufacture Of Boots And Shoes, →ISBN:
- When two pieces of leather have to be overlapped they must be suitably skived.2013, F. Y. Golding, The Manufacture Of Boots And Shoes, →ISBN:
Synonyms of skive
Forms of skive
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | skives |
| present participle | skiving |
| past participle | skived |
| past | skived |
| Noun | |
| plural | skives |
Origin of skive
Probably from French esquiver (“slink away”), from Middle French esquiver (“to escape”), from Spanish esquivar (“to avoid, reject, elude”), from esquivo (“contemptuous, loathsome”), itself from Old French eschiver, of East Germanic origin, from Gothic *𐍃𐌺𐌹𐌿𐌷𐍃 (*skiuhs, “afraid, barefaced”), from Proto-Germanic *skeuhaz (“afraid, frightened”). Cognate with English shy, eschew.
Probably from Dutch schijf (“slice”), probably influenced by shive. Ultimately from Proto-Germanic *skībǭ (“a shaving; slice”). Cognate to English shive, German Scheibe (“slice”), Old Norse skífa (“to cut into slices, slice”).
Words formed from skive
Phrases with skive
Words that rhyme with skive
34 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about skive
- What does skive mean?
- Skive means to avoid one's lessons or work (chiefly at school or university); shirk.
- What is skive in Malayalam?
- Skive in Malayalam is ജോലി ഒഴിവാക്കുക, ജോലിസ്ഥലത്തുനിന്നു മാറി നിൽക്കുക, രോഗം നടിക്കുക. See Skive meaning in Malayalam.
- How do you use skive in a sentence?
- But at least they preserved the idea that books were important and that reading and writing were more than just a skive for people too weedy to hack at one another with swords.
- What part of speech is skive?
- Skive can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce skive?
- Skive is pronounced /ˈskaɪv/.
- What is the past tense of skive?
- The past tense of skive is skived.
Words near skive in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: skive (page history and authors); skive (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); skive (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-skive.wav.
Cite this entry: “skive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/skive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.