skite

English

WOTD – 30 August 2016

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /skaɪt/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪt

Etymology 1

From Middle English skyt, skytte, skytt, from Old Norse skítr (“dung, faeces”), from Proto-Germanic *skītaz, *skitiz. Cognate with Old English sċite (“dung”). Doublet of shit and shite.

Noun

skite (plural skites)

1. (obsolete) A sudden hit or blow; a glancing blow.
2. A trick.
3. A contemptible person.
   • 1958, George Desmond Hodnett (lyrics and music), “Monto (Take Her Up to Monto)”:

     When Carey told on Skin-the-Goat / O'Donnell caught him on the boat / He wished he'd never been afloat / The dirty skite.

4. (Ireland) A drinking binge.
   • 2008, Tony Black, Paying for It, London: Preface, →ISBN, page 214:

     I needed alcohol to stop my nerves rattling. This felt like the longest period I'd been without my drug of choice for at least three years. I needed to go on a skite.

5. (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand) One who skites; a boaster.
   • 1918, Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding, page 74:

     [T]he Rooster was one of those fine, upstanding, bumptious skites who love to talk all day, in the heartiest manner, to total strangers while their wives do the washing.

6. (Ireland) A whimsical or leisurely trip.

   We're going on a skite to Dublin.

Verb

skite (third-person singular simple present skites, present participle skiting, simple past and past participle skited)

1. (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand) To boast.
   • a. 1918, “The Ragtime Army” [World War I Australian Army song], cited in Graham Seal, “The Singing Soldiers”, in Inventing Anzac: The Digger and National Mythology (UQP Australian Studies), St. Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press in association with the API Network, Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, 2004, ISBN 978-0-7022-3447-7, page 53:

     You boast and skite from morn to night / And think you're very brave, / But the men who really did the job / Are dead and in their graves.

   • 1983, John Carroll, Token Soldiers, Boronia, Vic.: Wildgrass Books, →ISBN, page 247:

     He still had bumfluff on his cheeks, he was that young. About once a month he used to shave it off, and come skiting about it. I smiled at the memory of him all lathered up, grinning at me through the mirror as he went to work on the bumfluff.

   • 2005, Kate Grenville, The Secret River, Melbourne, Vic.: Text Publishing, →ISBN, page 159:

     That Smasher, he said, and forced laugh. My word he can spin a yarn! She glanced towards him, her face halved by the lamplight. Just skiting, you reckon?

   • 2006, Pip Wilson, Faces in the Street: Louisa and Henry Lawson and the Castlereagh Street Push, 2nd edition, Coffs Harbour, N.S.W.: Pip Wilson, →ISBN, page 405:

     "England is mine," Henry says over a pint […]. "I hope that's not skiting." / "That's not skiting, sport. Edward Garnett reckons you're the best new thing in the Empire, and so do I. Good on you, mate, nothing on earth can stop you now! Here's mud in your eye."

   • 2016 January 4, Ian Verrender, “The crystal ball gazers got it all wrong in 2015 – don't expect better this year”, in Australian Broadcasting Corporation‎^[1], archived from the original on 20 June 2016:

     Without wishing to skite, the only other accurate prediction on 2015 was penned here by your columnist last January when we accurately forecast that all the forecasts would be inaccurate.

2. (Northern Ireland) To skim or slide along a surface.
3. (Scotland, slang) To slip, such as on ice.
4. (Scotland, slang) To drink a large amount of alcohol.
5. (archaic, vulgar) To defecate, to shit.
   • 1653, François Rabelais; Thomas Urquhart, transl., “How Gargantua's Wonderful Understanding Became Known to His Father Grangousier, by the Invention of a Torchecul or Wipebreech”, in The First Book of the Works of Mr. Francis Rabelais, […], London: Printed [by Thomas Ratcliffe and Edward Mottershead] for Richard Baddeley, within the middle Temple-gate, OCLC 606994702; republished as The Works of Mr. Francis Rabelais, […], volume I, London: Privately printed for the Navarre Society Limited, 23 New Oxford Street, W.C., [1921], OCLC 39370427, page 45:

     There is no need of wiping ones taile (said Gargantua), but when it is foule; foule it cannot be unlesse one have been a skiting; skite then we must before we wipe our tailes.

Derived terms

• skite-the-gutter

 

Translations

to boast

• Maori: whakatāwāhi

Alternative forms

• skyte

Etymology 2

Noun

skite (plural skites)

1. Alternative spelling of skete

Anagrams

• Kites, kites, steik, stike, tikes

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology 1

From Old Norse skita (“diarrhoea”), from skíta (“to defecate”).

Alternative forms

• skita, skitu (unofficial)
• skitu, skjutu, skjetu, skjøtu, skjeda (dialectal)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /²ʃɪːtə/, /²ʃɪtə/

Noun

skite f (definite singular skita, indefinite plural skiter, definite plural skitene)

1. diarrhoea (UK) or diarrhea (US)

   Synonyms: drite, diaré

2. overly cheerfulness

   Skita varer ikkje ut vika.

   The cheerfulness won’t pass the week.

Derived terms

• renneskite
• bråskite
• skiterempe

Etymology 2

Verb

skite (present tense skit, past tense skeit, supine skite, past participle skiten, present participle skitande, imperative skit)

1. Alternative form of skita

Etymology 3

Adjective

skite

1. neuter singular of skiten

Scots

Etymology

From Old Norse skjóta (“to shoot, dart”). Compare Norwegian Bokmål skyte, Danish skyde.

Verb

skite (third-person singular simple present skites, present participle skitin, simple past skited, past participle skited)

1. (intransitive) to dart, to move rapidly
2. to ricochet, to rebound
   • 1895, J Tweeddale, Moff:

     It only skited off ‘im like a shoor o’ hailstanes.

     It only bounced off of him like a shower of hailstones.

3. to slip, to slide on a smooth surface; to skate on ice
4. (transitive) to pitch, to throw (something) forcibly
5. (transitive) to cause (liquid) to spray or squirt
6. to strike, to hit

Noun

skite (plural skites)

1. a sharp blow, a glancing blow
2. a bound, a sudden start
3. the act of shooting or squirting liquid

   a skite o’ rain

   a sudden rain shower

4. a spree, a frolic
5. a slip, a skid

West Frisian

Etymology

From Old Frisian skīta, from Proto-West Germanic *skītan, from Proto-Germanic *skītaną, from Proto-Indo-European *skeyd- (“to part with, separate, cut off”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈskitə/

Verb

skite

1. to shit

Inflection

Strong class 1
infinitive	skite
3rd singular past	skiet
past participle	skiten
infinitive	skite
long infinitive	skiten
gerund	skiten n
auxiliary	hawwe
indicative	present tense	past tense
1st singular	skyt	skiet
2nd singular	skytst	skietst
3rd singular	skyt	skiet
plural	skite	skieten
imperative	skyt
participles	skitend	skiten

Related terms

• skyt

Further reading

• “skite (I)”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011