skiff

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See also: Skiff

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /skɪf/
  • Audio (AU):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɪf

Etymology 1

From Middle English skif, from Middle French esquif, from Old Italian schifo (“small boat”), from Lombardic skif (“boat”), from Proto-Germanic *skipą (“boat, ship”). Doublet of ship.

Noun

skiff (plural skiffs)

  1. A small flat-bottomed open boat with a pointed bow and square stern.
    • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 7, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:
      Old Applegate, in the stern, just set and looked at me, and Lord James, amidship, waved both arms and kept hollering for help. I took a couple of everlasting big strokes and managed to grab hold of the skiff's rail, close to the stern.
  2. Any of various types of boats small enough for sailing or rowing by one person.
    • 1799, William Wordsworth, The Two-Part Prelude, Book I:
      I went alone into a Shepherd's boat,
      A skiff that to a willow-tree was tied
      Within a rocky cave, its usual home […]
  3. (weather) A light wind/rain/snow, etc.
    • 2011, Albert C. Anderson, Thoughts of an Older Man: Poems as I See Life, page 249:
      When I woke up this morning what did I see? A skiff of snow on the evergreen tree
    • 2013, J. T. Brewer, Stewards of the White Circle: Calm Before the Storm:
      A little on again, off again, skiff of rain made the road slippery in spots.
    • 2014, Gary D. Svee, Spirit Wolf:
      The track was in the snow next to the line of rock brushed clean by the wind playing along the edge. Uriah saw it, too, and he knelt to examine the track. It was huge, five or six inches across, and clear in the skiff of snow.
    • 2019 October 30, Judy Kucharuk, “Skating in a winter wonderland”, in Alaska Highway News:
      The hoarfrost was heavy on the willow trees and there was a skiff of snow on the ice surface.
    • 2019 May 5, Brad Dokken, “More bust than boom for dwindling prairie chickens in Grand Forks County”, in Grand Forks Herald:
      Meadowlarks are in full voice, as are all manner of ducks, geese and gulls; with just a skiff of wind, sound travels a long way on mornings such as this.
    A skiff of rain blew into the shed and the two men moved their chairs back.
Translations

Verb

skiff (third-person singular simple present skiffs, present participle skiffing, simple past and past participle skiffed)

  1. to navigate in a skiff.

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Scottish Gaelic sguabag.

Noun

skiff (plural skiffs)

  1. (weather, Nova Scotia) a deep blanket of snow covering the ground
    • 2007, Diane Tullson, The Darwin Expedition, page 64:
      A skiff of new snow coats the ground.
    • 2013, Steve Baldwin, Snow Tales and Powder Trails, page 102:
      Otherwise, whenever we woke up to a skiff of fresh snow in the garden, maybe a couple of times in a winter, we would run outside to make snowmen and snow forts, feeling alive in the cool snowy air.
    • 2014, John Keeble, The Shadows of Owls: A Novel, page 362:
      Later, she'd seen the snow on Saint Lawrence Island, the snow on the Olympics, the pwder high in the Cascades, the Brooks Range, the Maine snow, the Rocky Mountain snow, the blowing around high plains snow, the deep snow at her home in Idaho, the hushed snow in the boreal forest of Northern Canada, the sea-driven snow at Prince Ruper and Ketchikan, Nome, Kotzebue, and Valdez, snow in the Arctic adhering to the now vanishing ice, the dry skiff of snow on the Alaskan tundra stitched by the silvery, needle-like oil pipeline.
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