Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A portion that has been skimmed from a liquid.
  • noun An embezzlement fraud in which the information on a credit card is copied, usually when the owner uses the card to make a purchase, and is then loaded onto a fake card to be used fraudulently.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of one who or that which skims.
  • noun That which is removed by skimming; scum: chiefly used in the plural.
  • noun plural In the coffee trade, the musty part of the coffee which is taken from the bags after being on shipboard.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of one who skims.
  • noun That which is skimmed from the surface of a liquid; -- chiefly used in the plural.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of skim.
  • noun Something skimmed from a surface etc.
  • noun A motion or action that skims.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun reading or glancing through quickly
  • noun failure to declare income in order to avoid paying taxes on it
  • noun the act of removing floating material from the surface of a liquid
  • noun the act of brushing against while passing

Etymologies

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Examples

  • All the costs are offloaded to the taxpayer, and the employer is probably skimming from the worker as well.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Libertarian Critiques of AZ Immigration Law 2010

  • Theft from ATM skimming is approaching $1 billion annually, according to Bankrate. com.

    Watch Out for ATM Skimming Jennifer Waters 2010

  • What you call skimming was a normal transfer of funds within different parts of a corporation.

    Three Stations : An Arkady Renko Novel Martin Cruz Smith 2010

  • He had came in skimming the ocean then shot up the clift past a radar site with caught him but too late to do any thing about it.

    The Best Day of All? 2008

  • When a book has TMI for me, I begin skimming past all the excess 'whatever' to get to the next significant part of the story.

    TMI 2007

  • Frank E. Moss, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services, said in an interview on Tuesday that government tests confirmed privacy advocates 'suspicions that the electronic passport might be vulnerable to so-called skimming from a greater distance than officials had previously said, meaning a matter of three or so feet instead of inches.

    April 27th, 2005 2005

  • However, I'm not sure I can buy that the story "goes over my head" because I'm a "skimming"-style reader.

    July/August Analog Karen Burnham 2008

  • SANDY - Investigators are warning about the threat posed by "skimming" - a growing crime where thieves use electronic devices to steal victims 'credit and debit card information - after a device was discovered recently inside a gas pump.

    deseretnews.com - Top Stories 2010

  • Verifone points to research from the Mercator Advisory Group that found 70 percent of credit card "skimming" -- the theft of credit card numbers and other information in the course of running a legitimate transaction -- occurs in restaurants.

    unknown title 2009

  • Watch out for "skimming" - "Skim Artists" are thieves who use small electronic devices, known as "skimmers" to capture a person's credit card information.

    NewsBlaze.com Current News - Top Stories 2009

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