SKIM • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Skim

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/skɪm/ Listen

verb

Skim v. t. (past & past part. skimmed; pres. part. skimming)

To clear (a liquid) from scum or substance floating or lying thereon, by means of a utensil that passes just beneath the surface; as, to skim milk; to skim broth.

To take off by skimming; as, to skim cream.

To pass near the surface of; to brush the surface of; to glide swiftly along the surface of. "Homer describes Mercury as flinging himself from the top of Olympus, and skimming the surface of the ocean."

Fig.: To read or examine superficially and rapidly, in order to cull the principal facts or thoughts; as, to skim a book or a newspaper.

Skim v. i.

To pass lightly; to glide along in an even, smooth course; to glide along near the surface. "Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main."

To hasten along with superficial attention. "They skim over a science in a very superficial survey."

To put on the finishing coat of plaster.

adjective

Skim adj. Contraction of Skimming and Skimmed.

Skim coat, the final or finishing coat of plaster.

Skim colter, a colter for paring off the surface of land.

Skim milk, skimmed milk; milk from which the cream has been taken.

See images of 'Skim'

Etymology of 'Skim'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Skim" Quotes from Famous Books

... is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully effective, for it is not quite dark. Mr. Snagsby standing at his shop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skim westward over the slice of sky belonging to Cook's Court. The crow flies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn ...

— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... witches skim the air, When spooks and goblins climb the stair; When bats rush out with muffled wings, And now and then the door-bell rings; But just the funniest thing of all Is 'cause you can't see ...

— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck

... don't think so! I've got an idea. Maudie Heywood's sure to make a most beautiful copperplate copy; we'll borrow hers, and just skim them over to get a kind of general acquaintance with the subject, sufficient to show 'intelligent interest'. Gibbie won't be able to question us with ...

— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... Schalckenberg, belongs the honour and glory of having made dwo mosd imbordand disgoveries, disgoveries of ingalgulable value do the worldt, disgoveries which will enable me do soar ad will indo the highesd regions of the embyrean, do skim the surface of the ocean, or do blunge do ids ...

— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... down at night he took to bed with him a whole bundle of French newspapers, which had already lain unopened on his table for two or three weeks. He began carelessly to tear open their covers and to skim the contents of their columns, in which, for the matter of that, there was but little that was new. He was just on the point of throwing them aside, when he suddenly bounded out of bed as if something had stung him. In the feuilleton ...

— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

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