skilly

English edit

Shortening.

skilly (uncountable)

(obsolete, nautical) Skillygalee.
- 1903, Jack London, The People of the Abyss, Macmillan:
  “I would be given for supper six ounces of bread and ‘three parts of skilly.’ ‘Three parts’ means three-quarters of a pint, and ‘skilly’ is a fluid concoction of three quarts of oatmeal stirred into three buckets and a half of hot water.”
- 2013, Wayne Ward, Old Union, page 168:
  Of course unlike the officers we never got fresh bread, we got what came from barrels stored in the lower peak and under the steward's padlock. Pantiles baked brick hard, mouldy oats for skilly, dried peas for soup, embalmed pork and beef more fat and bone than meat.

From Middle English skylly, skily, equivalent to skill +‎ -y.

skilly (comparative more skilly, superlative most skilly)

(Scotland, Northern England) Skilled, skilful.
- 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 80:
  So, being a fell impatient man, and skilly with his hands, he took Sam Gourlay a clout in the lug that couped him down in the stour […]