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
With that he awoke, and saw that the sunbeams were running over the wet skerry, and the Mermaid was still sitting by his side.
From Weird Tales from Northern Seas by R. Nisbet (Robert Nisbet) Bain
“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
"Not much to carry back," one said, and another added, "I shouldn't like to be left on a skerry now that the ferdimet is all but done."
From Viking Boys by Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
His boat, being smaller and lighter than the Laulie, could venture much nearer a skerry or holme.
From Viking Boys by Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
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
Wherever we passed, the heart of the Norwegian people went out to us, from the steamers crowded with holiday-making townsfolk, and from the poorest fishing-boat that lay alone among the skerries.
From Farthest North Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 by Fridtjof Nansen
Then thee, Selinus of the palms, I leave with happy wind, And coast the Lilybean shoals and tangled skerries blind.
From The Æneids of Virgil Done into English Verse by William Morris
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.
