skite

/skaɪt/

Etymology

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

  1. A sudden hit or blow; a glancing blow.
  2. A trick.
  3. A contemptible person.“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. A drinking binge.“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. One who skites; a boaster.“[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. A whimsical or leisurely trip.“We're going on a skite to Dublin.”

verb

  1. To boast.“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.”
  2. To skim or slide along a surface.“[…] skiting down that steep slope. But it's one thing to slide down a steep slope and quite another thing to climb back up - as Mary Jane soon discovered. Try her hardest , she simply could not get up that hill; she slid down faster than she went up.”
  3. To slip, such as on ice.“At this point I skited on a discarded banana and decided to use my eyes instead of my brains.”
  4. To move swiftly; to move in leaps and bounds.“His very shuttle skytes boldly along, and clatters through in faithful time to the tune of his merrier shopmates!”
  5. To pop, to quickly or briefly make a trip to.“[…] skiting over to Europe and back before you know it, taking notes on the way going and coming .”
  6. To drink a large amount of alcohol.