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skive

verb
/ˈskaɪv/

Etymology

Probably from French esquiver (“slink away”), from Middle French esquiver (“to escape”), from Spanish esquivar (“to avoid, reject, elude”), from esquivo (“contemptuous, loathsome”), itself from Old French eschiver, of East Germanic origin, from Gothic *𐍃𐌺𐌹𐌿𐌷𐍃 (*skiuhs, “afraid, barefaced”), from Proto-Germanic *skeuhaz (“afraid, frightened”). Cognate with English shy, eschew.

  1. derived from *skeuhaz✻ — “afraid, frightened”
  2. derived from *𐍃𐌺𐌹𐌿𐌷𐍃✻ — “afraid, barefaced”
  3. derived from eschiver
  4. derived from esquivar — “to avoid, reject, elude”
  5. derived from esquiver — “to escape”
  6. derived from esquiver — “slink away”

Definitions

  1. To avoid one's lessons or work (chiefly at school or university)

    To avoid one's lessons or work (chiefly at school or university); shirk.

    • Truancies, rather bewilderingly, have risen among children on the programme; the government hopes this is because children skive more as they get older.

  2. Something very easy, where one can slack off without penalty.

    • Mr Smith's history classes are a total skive.

  3. An act of avoiding lessons or work.

    • I got the bus to school, and the driver gave me the eye, thinking I was on the skive, and I started to explain that there was something up with my head, but then I couldn't be bothered.
    • Another school skive! I only realised this when my dentist's receptionist told me to expect a fair wait till I could be seen.
    • But at least they preserved the idea that books were important and that reading and writing were more than just a skive for people too weedy to hack at one another with swords.
  4. ›+ 3 more definitions

    1. A rotating iron disk coated with oil and diamond dust used to polish the facets of a…

      A rotating iron disk coated with oil and diamond dust used to polish the facets of a diamond.

      • This accident sometimes occasions a flaw in the diamond, and always damages the skive, by tearing up its surface.
      • There is room on the skive for three or four Diamonds at the same time ; and, to give each its proper share of attention, is as much as one person can well manage.

    2. An angled cut or bevel at the edge of something.

      • There would be no need for medial heel skive and the heel cup can be of normal depth.
      • The angle and the depth of skives should be specified.
      • The skive may be gradually brought to a "feather edge" in such a manner that when turned in it may, together with the leather of the body, be of the substance of the original.

    3. To pare or shave off the rough or thick parts of.

      • In the leather industry skive has another connotation, concerning splitting the skin perpendicularly to its thickness into thin layers. Imagine now being able to skive at the nanoscale.
      • When two pieces of leather have to be overlapped they must be suitably skived.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for skive. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA