skim
Part of speech: verb
adj
noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle English skemen, skymen, variants of scumen, from Old French escumer (“to remove scum”), from escume (“froth, foam”), from Frankish *skūm (“froth, foam”), from Proto-Germanic *skūmaz (“foam”), from Proto-Indo-European *skew- (“to cover, conceal”). See scum.
Inflected forms:
form: skims
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: skimming
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: skimmed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: skimmed
pos: verb
tags: past
form: skims
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: To pass lightly; to glide along in an even, smooth course; to glide along near the surface.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, / Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
gloss: To pass near the surface of; to brush the surface of; to glide swiftly along the surface of.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Homer describes Mercury as flinging himself from the top of Olympus, and skimming the surface of the ocean.
gloss: To hasten along with superficial attention.
pos: verb
examples: They skim over a science in a very night superficial survey.
gloss: To put on a finishing coat of plaster.
pos: verb
examples: Ceilings are lined with fibrous asbestos, the internal plastering being reduced to skimming alone.
gloss: To throw an object so it bounces on water.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: skimming stones
gloss: To ricochet.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: To read quickly or describe summarily, skipping some detail.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: (through)
I skimmed the newspaper over breakfast.
gloss: To scrape off; to remove (something) from a surface
pos: verb
tags: transitive
gloss: To clear (a liquid) from scum or substance floating or lying on it, by means of a utensil that passes just beneath the surface.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: to skim milk
to skim broth
gloss: To clear a liquid from (scum or substance floating or lying on it), especially the cream that floats on top of fresh milk.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: to skim cream
gloss: To steal money from a business before the transaction has been recorded, thus avoiding detection.
pos: verb
examples: Obviously, the longer cash sits around before being recorded, the more likely it is that a skimming fraud will occur.
[…] take this money without entering anything into the record-keeping system, thereby accomplishing a theft by skimming.
gloss: To surreptitiously scan a payment card in order to obtain its information for fraudulent purposes.
pos: verb
gloss: To become coated over.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: Having lowered fat content.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
gloss: A cursory reading, skipping the details.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: For a first quick appreciation of the approach, we recommend a fast reading of Chapter 1, then a skim through the figures of the next two chapters — glancing at the definitions of key concepts that appear below the figures in Chapters 2 and 3.
gloss: Skim milk.
pos: noun
tags: countable
informal
uncountable
examples: Two percent milk has only a fraction less fat than whole milk, so unless you are feeding a child or someone whose diet requires whole milk, skim is best.
gloss: The act of skimming.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Then you could jump 150 years and enjoy a skim across the Solent in Britain's remarkable Hovercraft.
gloss: That which is skimmed off.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: Theft of money from a business before the transaction has been recorded, thus avoiding detection.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: It's a hustle, but it keeps me busy. I can take in three to three-fifty a week, more with skims.
This potential is further increased by the ease of passing on the costs of corruption and racketeering to consumers; a skim of only one percent of a construction project can amount to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
Derived words: cream-skim
overskim
reskim
semi-skimmed
skimboard
skimboarding
skimmability
skimmable
skimmed milk
skimmer
skimmy
skim off
skim over
skim-read
skim through
skim coat
skim-coat
skim pit
Translations:
lang: Bulgarian
word: обирам каймака
roman: obiram kajmaka
lang: Catalan
word: desnatar
lang: Dutch
word: afromen
lang: Finnish
word: kuoria
lang: Finnish
word: kaapia
lang: French
word: écrémer
lang: Galician
word: estonar
lang: Hindi
word: मलाई निकालना
roman: malāī nikālnā
lang: Italian
word: scremare
lang: Italian
word: spannare
lang: Norman
word: êcrémer
lang: Portuguese
word: desnatar
lang: Russian
word: снима́ть
roman: snimátʹ
lang: Spanish
word: desnatar
lang: Swedish
word: skumma
lang: Walloon
word: scramer