Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To strike, especially with the open hand; slap; spank.
- To kick severely.
- To beat, as a clock.
- To move rapidly or briskly along; hurry; run; bound.
- To leap awkwardly.
- n. A slap: a stroke; a blow.
- n. A squall; a heavy fall of rain.
- n. A large portion. Compare skelper, 2, and skelping. Jamieson.
- n. A strip of iron prepared for making a pipe or tube by bending it round a bar and welding it. Those made for gun-barrels are thicker at one end than at the other.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive, Scotland To beat or slap.
- n. A narrow strip of rolled or forged metal, ready to be bent and welded to form a pipe.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Prov. Eng. A blow; a smart stroke.
- n. Scot. A squall; also, a heavy fall of rain.
- v. Scot. To strike; to slap.
- v. To form into skelp, as a plate or bar of iron by rolling; also, to bend round (a skelp) in tube making.
- n. A wrought-iron plate from which a gun barrel or pipe is made by bending and welding the edges together, and drawing the thick tube thus formed.
Etymologies
- Probably imitative. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The skelp is a piece or bar of iron, about three feet long, and four inches wide, but thicker and broader at one end than at the other; and the barrel of a musket is formed by forging out such pieces to the proper dimensions, and then folding or bending them into a cylindrical form, until the edges overlap, so that they can be welded together.”
“Give each other's children a skelp across the ear, impose and police standards of behaviour across the community.”
“He'll be after you down the street, trying to skelp you about the head with a brolly...”
“An 'altiye, if I fuckin' fin 'any fags, you're gettin' a fuckin 'skelp, man.”
“I was juist comin 'oot at the kirk door," says I, "when the minister cam 'skelp up again' me.”
“Sandy ga'e him a clap on the hurdles to quieten him, but aye the hent feet o 'him played skelp on the boddom o' the cairt, till I thocht he wudda haen't ca'd a 'to bits.”
“Twa bairnies, twa callans, that skelp o'er the leas,”
The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. The Songs of Scotland of the past half century
“Why, this afternoon, he jest tore a gentleman's skelp clean off his head, and he was borne out in a fainting condition.”
“But they lifted off old Hodsie's skelp and left him out to die,”
“Some of the heavier fish, too, after their jump may be seen to come down with portentous skelp on top of the retaining wall of the salmon-run in mid-stream, thence -- apparently with "wind bagged" -- to be ignominiously hurried back into the deep pool from which they have but the moment before hurled themselves.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘skelp’.
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
-
Irony
A list about iron, irons, and irony.
iron, irons, irony, Jeremy Irons, ferritin, ferruginous duck, ferruginous, ironing, hematite, limonite, magnetite, taconite and 144 more...
-
Favorite Five-Letter Words
Just what it sounds like. My favorites. Five letters.
ennui, barfy, samba, schwa, beefy, chunk, queef, spasm, skulk, bowel, elbow, fruit and 235 more...
-
Wordie/Wordnik Curio Cabinet
Oddments culled from my "main" lists that belong in a display cabinet of their own, plus sundry other curiosities. :-)
zeugma, ziggurat, xiphoid, xeric, whizgigging, whangdoodle, viviparous, vivific, vinolent, verjuice, vellicate, velleity and 1193 more...
-
A guid Scotch tongue
dreich, teuchter, crabbit, fankle, feart, ne'erday, skelp, haud yer wheesht, Jock Tamson's bairns, clype, gie it laldy, sleekit and 34 more...
-
Rare Words
A list of rare and extinct words, mostly drawn from the Scots dialect/language depending on your point of view
Tweets
Looking for tweets for skelp.

yarb And for what inadequate reason she had caused all this commotion! Just because her two sons quarrelled! She could have prevented that easily enough if she had brought them up properly and skelped them when they needed it.
- Rebecca West, The Judge Sep 12, 2009
whichbe After I got skelped, I got helped. Aug 14, 2008