skelp
1 Americannoun
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a slap, smack, or blow, especially one given with the open hand.
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the sound of such a slap or smack.
verb (used with object)
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to slap, smack, or strike (someone), especially on the buttocks; spank.
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to drive (animals) by slapping or goading them.
noun
verb
noun
noun
Etymology
Origin of skelp1
1350–1400; Middle English; probably imitative
Origin of skelp2
First recorded in 1805–15; perhaps special use of skelp 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It also helped that he was still fit to give his charges a skelp around the lug if required.
From The Guardian
The young man seemed highly amused by his elderly companion, who--two monstrous ostrich feathers nodding over her the while--was vowing by her soul and body that she couldn't touch another skelp of jelly--no, not the tiniest wee bit--unless somebody fed her with a spoon; which Terence, entering into the humour of the situation, proceeded immediately to do, amid the laughter and applause of all his neighbours.
From Project Gutenberg
What's more just now, gineral," shouted a half-angry ranger, "'twasn't your place to lose yer skelp a-comin'.
From Project Gutenberg
My skelp isn't wuth as much as Bowie's is, anyhow.
From Project Gutenberg
He was seventeen hands two if he was an inch, bright gray, with flea-bitten marks all over him; he held his head up so high at one end, and his tail at the other, that my grandfather said he 'd have frightened the stoutest fox-hunter to look at him; besides, my dear, he went with his knees in his mouth when he trotted, and gave a skelp of his hind legs at every stride, that it was n't safe to be within four yards of him.
From Project Gutenberg
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
