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skelp

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skelp¹

  • /skɛlp/

Where it comes from

From Middle English skelpen, probably of imitative origin. The noun is from Middle English skelp, from the verb.

verb skelps · skelping · skelped

  1. Northern England, Scotland, transitive To beat or slap with the hand. But Mistress Munro would up and be at the door and in she'd yank Andy by the lug, and some said she'd take down his breeks and skelp him, but maybe that was a lie.
  2. Northern England, Scotland, transitive To beat, pound or hammer. ... hither blith comes tinker John, Who skelps the kettle, and sweet tunes the drone, […]
  3. Scotland To drive by blows; to drive (hard), to cause to move rapidly. My fair opponents skelp me aff,[…]
  4. Ireland, Northern England, Scotland, intransitive To move briskly along; to run. […] the lassie became extremely wild, ran like a hare, and […] skelped home in a crack, on the "light side of her foot," to Barniewater.
  5. intransitive To rain heavily; (of rain) to fall. ... more than halfway to the summit / A rain squall down on them did plummet, / Skelping down harder by the minute / We'll wait […]

noun skelps

  1. A blow; a smart stroke, especially with the hand; a smack. They came crack down on their bottoms with a loud skelp on the seats.
  2. Scotland A squall; a heavy fall of rain.
  3. Scotland A large portion. Great skelps of riotous colors followed each other across the window-framed screen, pounding upon bleak northern hearts as the surf pounds upon a rocky headland.

skelp²

  • /skɛlp/

noun skelps

  1. A narrow strip of rolled or forged metal, ready to be bent and welded to form a pipe. […] he then heats one half of the skelp at a time in an air furnace, or other fire, and having so heated it, he passes the skelp between a pair of grooved rollers placed at the mouth of the furnace, for the purpose of uniting (or marrying, as he terms it) the edges of the metal ; that is, causing th

verb skelps · skelping · skelped

  1. transitive To form (a plate or bar of metal, etc.) into a skelp.
  2. transitive To bend round (a skelp) in tube-making.

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MLA

"skelp." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/skelp. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

skelp. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/skelp

Chicago

"skelp." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/skelp.

BibTeX
@misc{skelp_2026,
  title = {skelp},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/skelp},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}