skite

English

Etymology

Noun

skite (plural skites)

1. (obsolete) A sudden hit or blow; a glancing blow.
2. A contemptible person.
3. (Ireland) A drinking binge.
   • 2008, Tony Black, Paying for It, 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.

4. (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand) One who skites, a boaster.

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, WWI Australian Army song, cited in 2004, Graham Seal, Inventing Anzac: The Digger And National Mythology, 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.

   • 2005, Kate Grenville, The Secret River, 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, 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.”

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 shit.
   • 1653, François Rabelais, Thomas Urquhart (translator), Gargantua, Chapter XIII: How Gargantua′s wonderful understanding became known to his father Grangousier, by the invention of a torchecul or wipebreech,

     There is no need of wiping one′s tail, said Gargantua, but when it is foul; foul it cannot be, unless one have been a-skiting; skite then we must before we wipe our tails.

Anagrams

• kites
• tikes

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West Frisian

Etymology

From Old Frisian skīta, from Proto-Germanic *skītaną, from Proto-Indo-European *skeyd, *sḱeyd- (“to part with, separate, cut off”). Compare English shit, Low German schieten, Dutch schijten, German scheißen, Danish skide.

Verb

skite

1. To shit.

Conjugation

Infinitive: skite
	Present tense				Past tense
person	singular		plural		singular		plural
1st	ik	skyt	wy	skite	ik	skiet	wy	skieten
2nd	do/dû	skytst	jimme	skite	do/dû	skietst	jimme	skieten
3rd	hy/sy	skyt	hja	skite	hy/sy	skiet	hja	skieten
	Present participle		Imperative		Auxiliary		Past participle
	skitend (skitende)		skyt		hawwe		skiten

Related terms

• skyt