English

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, London: Preface, ISBN 978-1-84809-020-0, 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” [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 978-0-908069-09-5, 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 978-1-920885-75-5, 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 978-1-4303-0021-2, 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, 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 ****.
   • 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, Doctor in Physick, Containing Five Books of the Lives, Heroick Deeds, and Sayings of Gargantua, and His Sonne Pantagruel. Together with the Pantagrueline Prognostication, the Oracle of the Divine Bachus, and Response of the Bottle. Hereunto are Annexed the Navigations unto the Sounding Isle, and the Isle of the Apedefts: as likewise the Philosophical Cream with a Limosin Epistle, 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, Doctor in Physick. Containing Five Books of the Lives, Heroick Deeds, and Sayings of Gargantua and His Sonne Pantagruel: Together with the Pantagrueline Prognostication, the Oracle of the Divine Bacbuc, and Response of the Bottle: Hereunto are Annexed the Navigations unto the Sounding Isle, and the Isle of the Apedefts: as likewise the Philosophical Cream with a Limosin Epistle [...] In Two Volumes, 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.

Anagrams

• kites
• tikes

West Frisian

Etymology

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

Verb

skite

1. to ****

Inflection

Related terms

• skyt