skiff
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /skɪf/
rhymes: -ɪf
homophone: SCIF
Forms: form: skiffs
Etymology: From Scots skiff (“light shower of rain or snow”), from skiff (“move lightly”); compare the derivative skiffle (whence English skiffle) and (English skift (“light dusting of snow”) from) Scots skift (“light shower of snow”), from skift (“move lightly”), perhaps related to shift/Old Norse skipta, or perhaps an onomatopoeic formation.
Senses: examples: text: A skiff of rain blew into the shed and the two men moved their chairs back.
text: A little on again, off again, skiff of rain made the road slippery in spots.
ref: 2013, J. T. Brewer, Stewards of the White Circle: Calm Before the Storm:
text: Meadowlarks are in full voice, as are all manner of ducks, geese and gulls; with just a skiff of wind, sound travels a long way on mornings such as this.
ref: 2019 May 5, Brad Dokken, “More bust than boom for dwindling prairie chickens in Grand Forks County”, in Grand Forks Herald:
text: A lashing skiff of rain sheeted across the desert, a gift from the heavens that cooled my skin and allowed some color to return to the world. It was enough to combat the smell of creosote, but not enough to sustain the land, so the desert lay back ...
ref: 2019, Craig Johnson, Depth of Winter: A Longmire Mystery, Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 246:
glosses: A light, fleeting shower of rain or snow, or gust of wind, etc.
examples: text: At sunrise there was a slight skiff of ice on some water in a bucket; […]
ref: 1877, George Monro Grant, Ocean to Ocean: Sandford Fleming's Expedition Through Canada in 1872, page 131:
text: There was a light skiff of snow on the ground. The air was filled with flying flakes, which stung his cheeks sharply. A little streak of red was beginning to show in the east, and somewhere, far away, he heard a chicken crow sleepily.
ref: 1899, Clara Vawter, Of Such is the Kingdom..., page 72:
text: Bring a natural-looking touch of snow indoors by using your fingertips to lightly spread White Christmas Snow along the tops of the branches on your Christmas tree. To create a light skiff of snow on a six-foot noble fir, double the recipe.
ref: 1999, Sara Perry, Christmastime Treats: Recipes and Crafts for the Whole FamilyA Holiday Celebrations Book, Chronicle Books, →ISBN:
text: A thick skiff of dust covered the contents of the room and revealed hundreds of tracks made by very large rodents.
ref: 2001, Dave Gilham, Hell 7 New York 0, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 53:
text: It was getting time to start trapping and Hawk was getting anxious. Fall was everywhere from the yellow aspens, to the skiff of ice on the beaver ponds in the morning. Elk could be heard bugling up and down the valley […]
ref: 2001, Wayde Bulow, Lure of the Mountains: The Frontier Life of a Mountain Man, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 176:
text: ... the shore of Pontchartrain, dripping blood heavily into the inland sea, and watching as a crystal path hurtled forward across the lake, six feet wide, as thin as the skiff of ice on a basin left in the window on the night of the first freeze of autumn.
ref: 2004, Orson Scott Card, The Crystal City: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Tor Books, →ISBN, page 116:
text: A skiff of new snow coats the ground.
ref: 2007, Diane Tullson, The Darwin Expedition, page 64:
text: When I woke up this morning what did I see? A skiff of snow on the evergreen tree
ref: 2011, Albert C. Anderson, Thoughts of an Older Man: Poems as I See Life, page 249:
text: Otherwise, whenever we woke up to a skiff of fresh snow in the garden, maybe a couple of times in a winter, we would run outside to make snowmen and snow forts, feeling alive in the cool snowy air.
ref: 2013, Steve Baldwin, Snow Tales and Powder Trails, page 102:
text: The next morning the men awoke to find a light skiff of snow on the ground. This event heightened the anxiety of the men in getting things finished on the house in preparation for departure.
ref: 2014, Glenn Crumb, Marvin Crumb, Crumbs Along the Trail, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN, page 114:
text: Later, she'd seen the snow on Saint Lawrence Island, the snow on the Olympics, the powder high in the Cascades, the Brooks Range, the Maine snow, the Rocky Mountain snow, the blowing around high plains snow, the deep snow at her home in Idaho, the hushed snow in the boreal forest of Northern Canada, the sea-driven snow at Prince Ruper and Ketchikan, Nome, Kotzebue, and Valdez, snow in the Arctic adhering to the now vanishing ice, the dry skiff of snow on the Alaskan tundra stitched by the silvery, needle-like oil pipeline.
ref: 2014, John Keeble, The Shadows of Owls: A Novel, page 362:
text: The track was in the snow next to the line of rock brushed clean by the wind playing along the edge. Uriah saw it, too, and he knelt to examine the track. It was huge, five or six inches across, and clear in the skiff of snow.
ref: 2014, Gary D. Svee, Spirit Wolf:
text: A thick skiff of snow lay over the world, and the big stars looked down on the weirdly wild scene. A long howl quivered through the night. It was quickly answered by a wild ululation from all directions. A big wolf—a fierce lobo of the Texas frontier—slipped out of the brush […]
ref: 2016, Glenn Dromgoole, West Texas Stories, ACU Press, →ISBN:
text: The hoarfrost was heavy on the willow trees and there was a skiff of snow on the ice surface.
ref: 2019 October 30, Judy Kucharuk, “Skating in a winter wonderland”, in Alaska Highway News:
text: It will grow almost anywhere it can get a toehold; I once saw rye growing in a 0.4-inch (1 cm)-deep skiff of dust on a tractor blade. Farmers call these unplanned plants “volunteers,” and you can sometimes see them […]
ref: 2020, Lew Bryson, Whiskey Master Class: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding Scotch, Bourbon, Rye, and More, Harvard Common Press, →ISBN, page 57:
glosses: A (typically light) dusting of snow or ice (or dust, etc) (on ground, water, trees, etc).
Related terms: skiffle
skift