# Skite (verb - scots slang), noun, and AusE/NZE (noun) [also: blatherskite]



## blingue13

Hello there. Can anybody confirm or deny my suspicion that this verb derives from skate? eg 'skitin' all over the place'.  Would be fascinated to hear from anyone as I am enjoying renewing my acquaintance my scots mother tongue.


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## mora

Hello

I do not know for sure, but my guess would be it comes from the standard English 'skitter' or 'skittish' which is of Scandinavian origin , rather than skate, which is of French origin. 

Mora


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## Aupick

Concise OED says:

Skite: Scots & northern English dialect. = a person regarded with contempt: cf. BLATHERSKITE

For blatherskite it says:
Blatherskite: BLATHER + _skite_, corruption of derog. use of skate(2)

And skate(2) is not the rollerskate kind, which is skate(1) (derived from French), but the fish (derived from Old Norse).


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## Gordonedi

Sorry, but I don't know the derivation of this word, although I do use it now and again, particularly at this time of year when the roads are slippery.

I would not be surprised to learn that it shares a common root with "skate", because of the meaning of sliding.

I don't think that it's slang, though.  I believe that "skite" is a proper Scots word in its own right.

I'll see what I can find out at the local library.


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## river

*Skite* - to jettison something. Indicates a certain accidental movement. "I was skitin' about on thon oul slippy floor" "Watch how ye houl yer drink or it'll skite out of yer haun". From: Daisy
Roland McIntyre adds: Skite - a slap. As in,"behave, or you'll get wan skite" Dominic Campbell adds: Skite also means splash, as in "He got skit by the car hittin' the puddle" http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/voices/atilazed/s.shtml


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## Aupick

Looks like I got the wrong skite. Here's what the OED says about the verb:


> [perh. f. ON. _skýt-_, umlauted stem of _skjóta_ to shoot.
> This verb, and the corresponding n., have much currency in dial. use; fuller illustration of the various senses may be found in the _Eng. Dial. Dict._ For further material see also _Sc. Nat. Dict._]
> *1.* _intr._ To shoot or dart swiftly, esp. in an oblique direction; to run lightly and rapidly; to make _off_ hastily. _Sc._ and _dial._


ON = Old Norse


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## Brioche

My _Concise Scots Dictionary_ has a long list of meanings for skite

as a verb:
to move in leaps and bounds
to fly off quickly
to slip or slide suddenly on a smooth or frozen surface
to rebound, as hail
to fly off at a tangent
to fly off in a slanting direction
to make flat, thin stone skim the surface of water
to squirt
to spit
to eject liquid forcibly
to project with force
to have diarrhoea
to splash
to rain slightly

as a noun
a trick
an ill-turn
a spree
jollification
a nasty person
a meagre, starved-looking person
a strange-looking, ugly person


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## panjandrum

Here are a few comments from one of the homes of skite.  Space doesn't permit an exhaustive analysis, though, so I'll have to skite over the surface - or perhaps skite round the edges - of this topic.

river, Aupick and Brioche have listed stuff that all makes sense - though I would regard river's link with some caution, the same caution that applies to any user-created definitions list (like this one).

My mother would have used skite, "I haven't time to clean properly so a quick skite with the duster will have to do."

And she would also have called me a *blethercumskite* when I talked nonsense (one day long, long ago).  One of those is a person with an empty head and an over-active tongue.


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## HistofEng

and if you apply the "sk" to ---> "sh" rule that happened in Old/Middle English in southern England. you get "shite" or "shit" which has simialar meanings.


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## panjandrum

HistofEng said:
			
		

> and if you apply the "sk" to ---> "sh" rule that happened in Old/Middle English in southern England. you get "shite" or "shit" which has simialar meanings.


Different etymology.
skite (this version) from Old Norse _skjóta, _to shoot.
skite that relates to shite, from Old Norse _skíta, _to shite.


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## maxiogee

Hiberno-English has another meaning to the word, an extension of the meaning Brioche quotes from his/her Scots dictionary. It refers to an alcoholic binge - one where the person may be gone for a few days.

Q: Where's your brother Andy, I want a word with him?
A: God knows, he went off on a skite on Friday night and we haven't seen him since.


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## You little ripper!

In Australia we use the expression _to skite_ to mean _to boast_ or _to brag._ I'm not sure whether it has that meaning anywhere else


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## panjandrum

maxiogee said:
			
		

> Hiberno-English has another meaning to the word, an extension of the meaning Brioche quotes from his/her Scots dictionary. It refers to an alcoholic binge - one where the person may be gone for a few days.
> 
> Q: Where's your brother Andy, I want a word with him?
> A: God knows, he went off on a skite on Friday night and we haven't seen him since.


It's a really useful word - for I would have no problem understanding exactly what you mean. I might want to say that "... he went on *the* skite ...", but otherwise it makes complete sense.



			
				charles costante said:
			
		

> In Australia we use the expression _to skite_ to mean _to boast_ or _to brag._


Strangely, that definition has made it into the OED, marked as Austral/NZ colloquial.


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## foxfirebrand

panjandrum said:
			
		

> skite (this version) from Old Norse _skjóta, _to shoot.


Well, that confirms my suspicion, reading through this thread-- it's the same as _scoot, _a common word in AE.

The etymonline site is scant on definitions-- the word has scads of them.  For the phrasal verb "scoot over," my mother (an ethnic Scot) used the variant "scootch over."  She's the one who said "I hied myself," and sometimes she did things "to a fare-the-well."
.


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## blingue13

Thank you signore e signori. That gives me a lot of background and ties very well into many different verbs. much love ,blingue xx.


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## ewie

Brioche said:


> My _Concise Scots Dictionary_ has a long list of meanings for skite
> 
> as a verb:to have diarrhoea


 
My Scottish mother always uses _the skitters_ for _diarrhoea_; and I'd always assumed it was a variant of English English _the shits_.  But apparently not.  I must remember to tell her this the next time we're having tea together.


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## panjandrum

Just before tea ... 
 Skitter (noun) is a term of extreme abuse here: 
_<Insert offensive imperative verb of your choice>_ off, ye wee skitter!

They don't come a great deal worse than that.
I can see now why being labelled a skitter could indeed be more offensive than being labelled a shit, or even a shite.


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## ewie

That's a handy thing to know, P ~ thanks


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## Wordsmyth

This thread is a new topic following on from post #6 in another thread :



Brioche said:


> If I were a skite, I'd ask whether a heritage_ sight_ is a site with more to see.


 
"Skite" is a new word to me. I found a few references to it as a verb (in Australian / New Zealand / Irish usage) meaning "to boast", but nothing showing it as a noun. 

Could Brioche or someone else tell me whether it's in common (Aussie/Kiwi/Irish) usage as a noun — and its meaning? I could guess at _"boaster"_ or _"braggart"_ (by extension of the verb), or maybe _"show-off" _or _"pedant"_ (cf Brioche's quote above).

W


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## Cagey

Wordsmyth said:


> [....]
> "Skite" is a new word to me. I found a few references to it as a verb (in Australian / New Zealand / Irish usage) meaning "to boast", but nothing showing it as a noun.
> 
> Could Brioche or someone else tell me whether it's in common (Aussie/Kiwi/Irish) usage as a noun — and its meaning? I could guess at _"boaster"_ or _"braggart"_ (by extension of the verb), or maybe _"show-off" _or _"pedant"_ (cf Brioche's quote above).



There is a long and interesting thread on skite.  As a noun it means what you surmise.   There is also some discussion of its use in Australia.


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## Wordsmyth

Thanks Cagey,

That'll teach me to search the Forums directly, as well as dictionaries and Google .

Interesting, though, that in that long thread there was only one little post about 'skite' with the meaning that Brioche gave it. But I've now learned a lot about all the other meanings .

W


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## Cagey

Wordsmyth said:


> Interesting, though, that in that long thread there was only one little post about 'skite' with the meaning that Brioche gave it. But I've now learned a lot about all the other meanings .



We need an antipodean to tell us how commonly _skite_ has this meaning, however: 

A Google search for _skite_ with "site:au" gets a lot of hits, most of them for "_skite_" as a verb, some for "_skite_" as the boast itself, but some also for "_skite_" meaning a the person who boasts.

You get similar results for "site:nz".  Among the ones I found, this is a particularly informative one from a short story. A young girl is asking her aunt how to tell whether men are "_no-hopers, wingers_ or _skiters_".  Her aunt tells her that all you have to do is look at their cars:"If he drives one of those flash European jobs, he is probably a real skite, all puff and no wind, so full of himself there'll be no room for anyone else."  _Finding Love in an Old Dunger_ by Linda Marcinas (2008).​


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## Wordsmyth

So it seems "skite" is a pretty polyvalent word : verb, noun ... and I also saw it used (forgotten which site) as an adjective.

Actually I'm beginning to think "skite" may hold a record for the number of different 'meanings' it can have (at least if we wander into the realm of proper nouns). A little more web-surfing came up with a type of _snowkite_, a range of _kids' shoes_, a 1978 _punk album title_ by Alberto y Los Trios Paranoias, and something medical called "_scallop skite-glycosaminoglycan_".


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## panjandrum

As suggested in the other thread, skite in my part of the world does not relate to the antipodean sense of boastfulness.  It is more like one of the other OED definitions:
_A person who on some account or other is regarded with contempt._ 

This, in turn, links with _blatherskite, bletherskite, bletherskate_ ...
These terms tend to be passed on orally rather than in writing and thus have variable spellings 
*a.* A noisy talkative fellow; a talker of blatant nonsense.
*b.* Foolish talk; nonsense.

Hmmm - I can see the connection with boastfulness OK 

<< Looking at the earlier thread about skite (verb), I see that it also discussed skite (noun) in some variants - so I merged the threads. >>


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## noux

My mum from Northern Ireland would have said something like this: "He was a wee skite of a lad"... about me.


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## Cagey

noux said:


> My mum from Northern Ireland would have said something like this: "He was a wee skite of a lad"... about me.



Would she have meant that you were talkative (as in Panj's posts #3 and #24)? Or something else?


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## Wordsmyth

panjandrum said:


> [...]
> My mother would have used skite, "I haven't time to clean properly so a quick skite with the duster will have to do."


 
A very similar one from a Scottish friend of mine:

"Give me your shirt and I'll give it a quick skite with the iron" 

(potential for a Spoonerism there )

By the way, I'm beginning to think that references to 'skite' in Irish usage should perhaps be limited to the North. Two Irish friends (one from Belfast, one from Antrim) know the word ... so with Panj that makes three . Whereas my Irish acquaintances from the South have never heard it. OK, that's not a huge sample, so maybe someone would like to disprove my theory.

W


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## ewhite

I never heard by Irish granny (Kilfinane, County Limerick) use _skite_, except in _blatherskite_, which was one of her favorite terms of opprobrium. Now Granny left Kilfinane in 1911, so the word may indeed have fallen out of usage in the south of Ireland, or was never used without the prefix blather-.


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## panjandrum

Wordsmyth said:


> [...]Whereas my Irish acquaintances from the South have never heard it. OK, that's not a huge sample, so maybe someone would like to disprove my theory.
> W


See post #11 for a western/Dublin use of _skite_.


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## cycloneviv

For this antipodean, _skite_ is never used at all and I wouldn't understand it if I heard it. At first I thought it might be another example of eastern states' slang that isn't used here in the west, but I notice that the first person who mentioned this as Australian slang is also located here in Perth. All I can think is that perhaps it's either a generational difference; the use of _skite_ may have died out by the time I was growing up or it may have developped more recently and slipped under my radar. Alternately, perhaps the earlier post was made by a blow-in from the east.


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## Wordsmyth

panjandrum said:


> See post #11 for a western/Dublin use of _skite_.


 
Ummm, post #11 refers to "Hiberno-English". Does that mean 'western/Dublin' to you, panj? ... or do you know something about maxiogee's specific location/origins? 

Or am I missing something else? 

W


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## panjandrum

Wordsmyth said:


> Ummm, post #11 refers to "Hiberno-English". Does that mean 'western/Dublin' to you, panj? ... or do you know something about maxiogee's specific location/origins?
> 
> Or am I missing something else?
> 
> W


From other posts in the past I know that his linguistic influences are west of Ireland and Dublin.  The expressions "off on a skite" or "off on the skite" are somewhat familiar to me.  I had a look and found THIS LINK which supports maxiogee's explanation: 
_engaged in a drinking binge._
"I was on the skite with him on his last night in Boston."
The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.


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## Wordsmyth

Thanks, panj

Mystery solved.

W


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## ewie

One of the most frequently heard utterances in my household is _Oh you don't half talk some _rubbish_, Ewie ~ shut up!_  (I just open my mouth and it floods out, I'm afraid.)
Anyway, I was casting about today for a word which describes someone who talks 'a lot of blatant nonsense' when all of a sudden _blatherskite_ popped into my head.
To judge from this thread and this thread (where it's mentioned in passing right at the very end), knowledge of this word is kind of patchy.
I'd just like to hear from anyone-anywhere about their usage ~ or lack of usage ~ of this word.  Thanks.


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## Pedro y La Torre

Skite is totally unknown in my part of the world, or at least amongst those I know. That said, I've never once heard or even read of it before, so anyone using it here (Dublin) would almost certainly be elderly, or come from Ulster.



ewie said:


> My Scottish mother always uses _the skitters_ for _diarrhoea_; and I'd always assumed it was a variant of English English _the shits_.  But apparently not.  I must remember to tell her this the next time we're having tea together.



This reminds me of the Irish saying " to have a dose of the _scutters_", I wonder if it's related.


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## ewie

Pedro y La Torre said:


> This reminds me of the Irish saying " to have a dose of the _scutters_", I wonder if it's related.


Well, it certainly _looks/sounds_ like it, Pedro.

(Fans of popular etymology would, I imagine, derive _blatherskite_ from _blather/blether _= 'talk purposelessly' + _skite_ = 'shite, shit' ... though apparently in the real dull world of real etymology the _skite_ bit is _skite = skate_.)


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## Gwan

Thumbs up from NZ for 'skite' noun & verb with the 'boastful' meaning.


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## pickarooney

ewie said:


> Well, it certainly _looks/sounds_ like it, Pedro.
> 
> (Fans of popular etymology would, I imagine, derive _blatherskite_ from _blather/blether _= 'talk purposelessly' + _skite_ = 'shite, shit' ... though apparently in the real dull world of real etymology the _skite_ bit is _skite = skate_.)



It's one of those words that would suit an etymologists' game of Call My Bluff. 
The Dutch derivation might be _blader-scheet_ - fart-browser.


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## inauspicious_gentleman

In my part of the United States (Midwest-Great Lakes region) I have only heard the word used as the verb "skitter", i.e. children and small animals "skitter" around. It seems to be slang, but it is falling out of vernacular use.  I think I may have heard my Indiana-bred grandmother say it.  My Ohio-bred wife has never heard it.

Once on a Canadian TV rerun of a 1960s British sitcom show, I heard a caricature of a Scotsman using "blatherskite" as a noun in a derogatory fashion (although, it sounded more like "blatherskythe" when I heard it.)

I found the word "skite" in the Dubliners' 1960s version of the English folk song "Mrs. McGrath", the new version being about a young guy getting thrown out of college: 

"I tried to stay and work at night / The fellas in the digs took me out on the _skite_ / And when you sent me me fees now what do you think? / I spent all the money on the women and the drink".

I didn't know what it meant, so I looked it up here.  I didn't immediately connect it to "skitter".  It is interesting how one word can mean so many things.


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## Scholiast

Greetings all

Two observations:

First, (fairly) polite modern conversational English uses "[the] squitters" to refer to a loose bowel.

Secondly, in at least one of its connotations, with reference to Brioche (#7)'s list, it must be related to or descended from the same OE or ON root as the words "skid" and "sked" in modern English.

"sk..." often indicates a north Germanic, that is, Scandinavian, origin, as in "skiff" vs. "ship", "skirt" vs. "shirt".


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## inauspicious_gentleman

Just to be clear, "children and small animals 'skitter' around" means that they scamper, moving quickly and sporadically, perhaps like the Norse description of how the skate moves, not that children and animals have loose bowels.  I've never heard the word squitter used that way.


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## PaulQ

OED





> Pronunciation:  /skaɪt/
> Forms:  Also ME (18 Sc.) skyte.
> Etymology:  < Old Norse skíta (Icelandic skíta , Norwegian and Swedish skita , Danish skide ), or Middle Low German schîten, Middle Dutch schijten, = Old English scítan shit v.(Show Less)
> *Sc. and dial.*
> intr. To void excrement.
> 
> 
> 1449   R. Wenyngton in Paston Lett. & Papers (2005) III. 69,   I cam a-bord the Admirall and bade them stryke in the Kyngys name.., and they bade me go skyte in the Kyngys name.
> 1596   J. Harington New Disc. Aiax Prol. sig. B1,   In further contempt of his name, vsed a phrase that he had learned at his being in the low Countreys, and bad Skite vpon Aiax.
> 1808   in J. Jamieson Etymol. Dict. Sc. Lang.
> 1823   E. Moor Suffolk Words 353.


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## inauspicious_gentleman

To clarify once again...I've never heard "squitter" used that way in America.


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## inauspicious_gentleman

I haven't heard "skitter" used both ways, but I've heard "scat" used both ways in America, which is perhaps related to skitter.  Scat, as in "to go away quickly" or "an animal fecal dropping" according to merriam-webster online.  Is it related to scatter?  They seem pretty close.


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## PaulQ

Scholiast said:


> First, (fairly) polite modern conversational English uses "[the] squitters" to refer to a loose bowel.


Not that modern:
OED





> *squitter*, n. Etymology:  < squitter v. Compare skitter n.1 Now dial. and colloq. 1. Diarrhœa. Usually in pl. Cf. skitter n.1 1. _*1664   *C. Cotton Scarronides 15   It bounces, foams, and froths, and flitters, As it were troubled with the squitters._
> 
> *skitter*, *n.1* Etymology:  < skitter v.1 Chiefly Sc. and dial. 1. Diarrhœa; looseness or laxity of the bowels. Now freq. in pl. (Also colloq.)
> 
> *skitter, v.1* Forms:  Also ME skiter-, ME skyter-.Etymology:  A frequentative of skite v.1 Sc. and dial. intr. To void thin excrement. a1400   Langtoft's Chron. (Rolls) 2 252   Skiterende Scottes, Telle i for sottes, And wrecches unwar.


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