Word.ws English Dictionary

skiver

/ˈskaɪvə/US/ˈskaɪvəɹ/

skiver noun: a slacker.

Noun (1)

skiver (plural skivers)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, informal) A slacker.
  2. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, informal) A truant; one who is absent without permission, especially from school.

Noun (2)

skiver (plural skivers)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, informal) One who uses a skive (or skives).
  2. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, dialectal, informal) A skewer.
  3. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, informal) An inferior quality of leather, made of split sheepskin, tanned by immersion in sumac, and dyed, formerly used for hat linings, pocketbooks, bookbinding, etc.
  4. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, informal) The cutting tool or machine used in splitting leather or skins.

Verb

skiver (third-person singular simple present skivers, present participle skivering, simple past and past participle skivered)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, dialectal, informal) To skewer, impale.
    • […] it's I that wishes I could be sure 'twas malice, I'd skiver you, heels and elbows, on my sword, and roast you alive on that fire.1863, J[oseph] Sheridan Le Fanu, “The Dead Secret, Showing how the Fire-worker Proved to Puddock that Nutter Had Spied Out the Nakedness of the Land”, in The House by the Church-yard. […], volume I...
    • I'll finish heating the oven, and set you free to go and skiver up them ducks.1886 May – 1887 April, Thomas Hardy, “chapter 9”, in The Woodlanders […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

Proper noun capitalized: Skiver

Skiver (plural Skivers)

  1. A surname.

Forms of skiver

Noun
pluralskivers
Verb
third-person singular presentskivers
present participleskivering
past participleskivered
pastskivered
Proper noun
pluralSkivers

Origin of skiver

From skive (“play truant”) + -er. Probably from French esquiver (“slink away”).

From skive (“to shave”) + -er. Probably from Dutch schijf (“slice”), probably influenced by shive.

Occupation surname, from skiver (“one who polishes diamonds”).

Phrases with skiver

Words that rhyme with skiver

2 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about skiver

What does skiver mean?
Skiver means a slacker.
What part of speech is skiver?
Skiver can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce skiver?
Skiver is pronounced /ˈskaɪvə/ (UK).
What is the plural of skiver?
The plural of skiver is skivers.

Words near skiver in the dictionary

  1. skiv
  2. skive
  3. skive off
  4. skived
  5. skived off
  6. skiver
  7. skivered
  8. skivering
  9. skivers
  10. skives
  11. skives off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: skiver (page history and authors); Skiver (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-skiver.wav.

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