skerry
Americannoun
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skerries
plural
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a small, rocky island.
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a coastline with a series of such islands offshore.
noun
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a small rocky island
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a reef
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of skerry
1605–15; Shetland dial. skerri a rock in the sea < Old Norse sker (genitive plural skerja ) rock or reef (in the sea). See scar 2
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.
See Examples For:
For years I coloured your world in hues you didn't recognise; never your island, always your skerry – "unable to see the romance of the thing for the thing itself".
From The Guardian ● Apr. 9, 2010
Whatever was pinkish of it was now hidden by a skerry of weedy boulders.
From The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
O. N. sker, a skerry, an isolated rock in the sea.
From Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch by George Tobias Flom
“I do not know,” says Leif, “whether it is a ship or a skerry that I see.”
From The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 by Julius E. Olson
To which—with a prolonged yawn—the prospective client drawled out: "I ain't particular, Mister, I jest thought I'd get you to pick out a few skerry fellows that would complemise easy!"
From Something of Men I Have Known With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective by Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing) Stevenson
Golden eagles and buzzards soar, and otters and grey seals share the rocky skerries.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 29, 2020
But Lake Malar is one of the largest in Sweden, with more than 8,000 islands and skerries and several cities on its perimeter, including Stockholm to the east.
From New York Times ● Aug. 1, 2018
Down here it is deep night; dark gleams the surf on the skerries.
From Time Magazine Archive
“Going to get out four or five mile, master, and then we can head round, and get clear o’ the long race and the skerries.
From Cutlass and Cudgel by J. Schonberg
The beach curved inward, forming a small bay sheltered by outlying skerries.
From The Sensitive Man by Poul William Anderson
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.
