Word.ws English Dictionary

Skutnik

Skutnik proper noun: a surname.

Proper noun

Skutnik

  1. A surname.

Noun

Skutnik (plural Skutniks)

  1. (US, jargon) A guest at the State of the Union address or a similar political event.
    • When CNN’s Jeff Greenfield assured the crowd, “I haven't planted a skutnik here,” I stopped him: I had heard of a sputnik, the Russian word for the first Soviet satellite, but what was a skutnik? […] In 1995, the columnist William F. Buckley was one of the first to use the name as an eponym...2001 July 8, William Safire, “On Language”, in New York Times Magazine, The Way We Live Now, page 15
    • The likes of Shea got added by the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan, who started what came to be called the Lenny Skutnik Moment, where an everyday person is plucked from the populace and placed in the first lady’s gallery. Martin L. Skutnik earned a seat in the gallery on Jan. 13, 1982, when, on...[2003 January 28, Susan Campbell, “The Real State of the Union”, in Hartford Courant, page D2
    Synonyms:
    Lenny Skutnik

Examples of Skutnik in a sentence

  • Buckley was one of the first to use the name as an eponym: “President Clinton was awash with Skutniks.”2001 July 8, William Safire, “On Language”, in New York Times Magazine, The Way We Live Now, page 15:
  • Ever since then, almost every State of the Union address has featured one or more “Skutniks,” or Americans who somehow embody everyday heroism, stoicism, victimhood, or identity politics.2018 January 29, Nick Gillespie, “All the President’s Human Props”, in Reason.com:
  • Among Parson’s Skutniks this week were Mayor Lyda Krewson and the other mayors of Missouri’s four largest cities.2020 January 17, Tony Messenger, “Missouri has a Medicaid crisis involving 100,000 children, and Parson ignores it”, in St. Louis...

Synonyms of Skutnik

Forms of Skutnik

pluralSkutniks

Origin of Skutnik

The name is thought to derive from Romanian scuti (“to absolve”); compare Romanian Scutelnici. The common noun comes from Martin Leonard Skutnik III, a guest at the 1982 State of the Union address; see quotations below.

Phrases with Skutnik

Questions about Skutnik

What does Skutnik mean?
Skutnik means a surname.
How do you use Skutnik in a sentence?
Buckley was one of the first to use the name as an eponym: “President Clinton was awash with Skutniks.”
What part of speech is Skutnik?
Skutnik can be a proper noun or a noun.

Words near Skutnik in the dictionary

  1. Skutari
  2. skutch
  3. skutches
  4. skute
  5. skutes
  6. Skutnik
  7. Skutniks
  8. Skutt
  9. skutterudite
  10. skutterudites
  11. skuttle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Skutnik (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:

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