upskip

upskip noun: an upstart.

Noun

upskip (plural upskips)

(obsolete) An upstart.
- If you should ever see any of the King's Judges taking upon them a legislative, instead of a judicial, Power; dispensing with, denying, or withholding the known, established Laws, or executing the Dictates of any foreign Legislature, or Jurisdiction, unapproved by our Parliament; if any such should...1748, Charles Lucas, A thirteenth address to the free citizens and freeholders of the city of Dublin., page 31
- Nobody can tell that yet, of course; it is too soon; in a month, in two months, perhaps, we shall know whether Mussolini is a real leader or an upskip.1922, THE VILLAGER - Volume 6, page 33
A raise in pitch with no perceptible glide connecting the tone to the previous sound
- Someone reading the following aloud, The normal course will have one to three hour-examinations per term and a three-hour examination at the end of each term. will feel a need to put a pause after the first three and resume on hour with an abrupt upskip and also possibly a glottal stop plus head...1989, Dwight Le Merton Bolinger, Intonation and Its Uses: Melody in Grammar and Discourse, page 84
- Three tests are administered, in which aspects of pitch trajectories analysed as allphonic in the phonemic system turn out to have more importance than the supposedly phonemic distinctions; the second of these tests finds that upglides and upskips in a sequence that Trager & Smith (1951) would...1976, Dafydd Gibbon, Perspectives of Intonation Analysis, page 222

upskip (third-person singular simple present upskips, present participle upskipping, simple past and past participle upskipped)

(poetic) To spring or skip up.
- With rags and leathers in his hands Upskips be ostentatiously; Anon he at the summit stands, And window cleans vivaciously.1893, Judy - Volume 53, page 29
- Come tumbling on to steal And gorge and gorge and gorge do bumble bees, Which, stalwart strong, rob ; while, praying some service, Upskips the weakly butterfly whose purse The good she does not get repays.1915, Charles Anthony Lynch, Gladys Klyne and More Harmony, page 62

Pitch-squeeze tone modifier (sign :) is manifested by a pitch range narrowing over the whole tone cadence; hence no pitch upskip or downskip or evenskip is noticeable.1997, Ashok Ramchandra Kelkar, Language in a Semiotic Perspective:
Suddenly the flame upskips As the seething log falls in;1942, Robert Nichols, Such was My Singing: Being a Selection from Poems Written Between the Years 1915 and 1940:

Noun
plural	upskips
Verb
third-person singular present	upskips
present participle	upskipping
past participle	upskipped
past	upskipped

What does upskip mean?: Upskip means an upstart.
How do you use upskip in a sentence?: Pitch-squeeze tone modifier (sign :) is manifested by a pitch range narrowing over the whole tone cadence; hence no pitch upskip or downskip or evenskip is noticeable.
What part of speech is upskip?: Upskip can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of upskip?: The plural of upskip is upskips.

Adapted from Wiktionary: upskip (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: 2026-09-02

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