Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Full; bursting; very large.

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

  • verb Present participle of skelp.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • I gave ye a decent skelping, but I didna bloody ye, for God's sake.

    A Breath of Snow and Ashes Gabaldon, Diana 2005

  • Lord Evandale, skelping as fast as his horse could trot, and twenty red-coats at his back.

    Old Mortality 2004

  • “As for the rest, I guess how it is, and I scorn to bear malice, or tell tales, as much as another; but no thanks to that little jilting devil, Jenny Dennison, who deserves a tight skelping for trying to lead an honest lad into a scrape, just because he was so silly as to like her good-for-little chit face.”

    Old Mortality 2004

  • "There is nothing," says he, "will be taming a lass like skelping a wean, or curing him o 'the hives, and it's weans I will be wanting about the place," says he.

    The McBrides A Romance of Arran John Sillars

  • The wrack and ruin of three score years; and it’s a terror to live that length, I tell you, and to have your sons going to the dogs against you, and you wore out scolding them, and skelping them, and God knows what.

    Act Three John Millington 1911

  • The wrack and ruin of three score years; and it's a terror to live that length, I tell you, and to have your sons going to the dogs against you, and you wore out scolding them, and skelping them, and God knows what.

    The Playboy of the Western World; a Comedy in Three Acts 1907

  • I received there a stun and a slight wound across the breast, the ball bursting through a small sapling against which I leaned and skelping my breast.

    Sketch of Cobb Legion Cavalry and some incidents and scenes remembered, Wiley C Howard 1901

  • ` ` No; not young Earnscliff --- not young Earnscliff yet; but his time may come, if he will not take warning, and get him back to the burrow-town that he's fit for, and no keep skelping about here, destroying the few deer that are left in the country, and pretending to act as a magistrate, and writing letters to the great folk at Auld Reekie about the disturbed state of the land.

    The Black Dwarf 1898

  • Now this was more than my philosophy could stomach, so I made a grab at her, but she dipped from my outstretched fingers and slipped into the midst of the crowd of other girls, and straightway I dropped from my parapet and ran after her, vowing the merriest, pleasantest skelping.

    The God of Love 1898

  • Yet, though everybody was busy and skelping at it, such a stress of work was accompanied with much disarray.

    The House with the Green Shutters George Douglas Brown 1885

Comments

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  • Grose's 1787 Provincial Glossary records this meaning: a hearty beating.

    May 3, 2011