Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One, such as a cutting tool, that skives.
- n. A soft thin leather split off the outside of sheepskin and used for bookbinding.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Same as skiving-knife.
- n. Leather split by the skiving-knife; a thin leather made of the grained side of split sheepskin tanned in sumac. It is used for cheap bindings for books, the lining of hats, pocket-books, etc. Compare skiving.
- n. In shoe manufacturing, a machine for cutting counters for shoes and for making rands; a leather-skiving machine.
- n. An old form of dirk.
- n. A skewer.
- To skewer; impale.
- To scatter; disperse; fly apart or in various directions, as a flock of birds.
Wiktionary
- n. One who uses a skive (or skives).
- n. A slacker.
- n. dialect A skewer.
- n. An inferior quality of leather, made of split sheepskin, tanned by immersion in sumac, and dyed, formerly used for hat linings, pocketbooks, bookbinding, etc.
- n. The cutting tool or machine used in splitting leather or skins.
- v. To skewer, impale.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An inferior quality of leather, made of split sheepskin, tanned by immersion in sumac, and dyed. It is used for hat linings, pocketbooks, bookbinding, etc.
- n. The cutting tool or machine used in splitting leather or skins, as sheepskins.
Examples
“(Oxford English Dictionary) [31.1] A skiver is a skewer onto which meat would be threaded for cooking.”
“The point is that even those of a "skiver" mentality who entered employment with the more enlightened companies quickly changed their attitude.”
“De niggers soon 'skiver' dat he wuz a Yankee, en dat he come down ter Norf C'lina fer ter learn de w'ite folks how to raise grapes en make wine.”
“W'en Mars Marrabo 'skiver' dat Sandy wuz gone, he 'lowed Sandy had runned away.”
“The skiver of the year trophy goes to Gerry from TWN Construction, for surfing in Newquay while claiming to be stuck up a crane at the redevelopment of Wembley Stadium.”
“By the heyday of the binder's craft, the early to mid eighteenth century, two types of leather were recognized as the best: skiver, or lambskin, which was strong but so thin that it scarcely required any paring, and Moroccan goatskin, which was highly valued for its skiver-like characteristics combined with its delightful reddish color.”
“Objects from Sell Cave. a, Pestles or grinding stones; b, celt, pottery disks, paint stones, and skiver 46 17.”
Archeological Investigations Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76
“Bone and shell in small amounts were found here, and among them the skiver shown at d in plate 36.”
Archeological Investigations Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76
“A foot farther in was part of a skiver; and 2 feet beyond this was a large knife of white chert almost as clear and compact as chalcedony, shown at a in plate 27.”
Archeological Investigations Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76
“How I execrated that ill-starred jade, and the Dutch skiver, but for whom I might at this moment have been my own master.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘skiver’.
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The Bindery
A list of bookbinding terms and phrases, for assembling new or repairing/reassembling old books.
perfect binding, animal glue, spine, textblock, polyvinyl acetate, double-fan adhesi..., board, backing, rounding, bone, book cloth, pasteboard and 270 more...
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Open List: Sheepishness
Everything sheep, from Artiodactyla to zodiac.
lanolin, ram, ewe, Artiodactyla, even-toed ungulate, ruminant, Ovis aries, ovine, domestic, domesticated, neotenic, mouflon and 426 more...
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Finer Points
Objects like needles and spines whose tips are drawn to a fine point.
poynet, prickpunch, spine, needle, pin, baton, glochid, quill, beak, stylet, trocar, harelip-needle and 66 more...
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cutting words
sarcasm, sarx, sarcoptic, syssarcosis, shrew, shrewd, screed, scred, shroud, scroll, scrod, scrutiny and 326 more...
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kingrat47's Words
procrustean, devolution, cacophony, hippopotamus, crunch, beware, chortled, sibilant, subtle, undermine, acromegaly, acropolis and 645 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1406 more...
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redchuck's Words
diagetic, melungeon, palimpsest, y'all, fandango, corpuscule, dibble, bedouin, flanger, antediluvian, camphor, nadir and 69 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for skiver.
ruzuzu Does this have anything to do with aebleskivers? Apr 26, 2011
kingrat47 I use this as a synonmym for "shirker," which is apparently not a terribly common usage. Huh. Dec 10, 2006