skite

noun

1. (obsolete)A sudden hit or blow; a glancing blow.
2. A trick.
3. A contemptible person.

   “When Carey told on Skin-the-Goat / O'Donnell caught him on the boat / He wished he'd never been afloat / The dirty skite.”

4. (Ireland)A drinking binge.

   “I needed alcohol to stop my nerves rattling. This felt like the longest period I'd been without my drug of choice for at least three years. I needed to go on a skite.”

5. (Australia, Ireland, New-Zealand)One who skites; a boaster.

   “[T]he Rooster was one of those fine, upstanding, bumptious skites who love to talk all day, in the heartiest manner, to total strangers while their wives do the washing.”

6. (Ireland)A whimsical or leisurely trip.

   “We're going on a skite to Dublin.”

7. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative spelling of skete.

verb

1. (Australia, Ireland, New-Zealand)To boast.

   “You boast and skite from morn to night / And think you're very brave, / But the men who really did the job / Are dead and in their graves.”

   “He still had bumfluff on his cheeks, he was that young. About once a month he used to shave it off, and come skiting about it. I smiled at the memory of him all lathered up, grinning at me through the mirror as he went to work on the bumfluff.”

   “That Smasher, he said, and forced laugh. My word he can spin a yarn! She glanced towards him, her face halved by the lamplight. Just skiting, you reckon?”

   “"England is mine," Henry says over a pint[…]. "I hope that's not skiting." / "That's not skiting, sport. Edward Garnett reckons you're the best new thing in the Empire, and so do I. Good on you, mate, nothing on earth can stop you now! Here's mud in your eye."”

   “Without wishing to skite, the only other accurate prediction on 2015 was penned here by your columnist last January when we accurately forecast that all the forecasts would be inaccurate.”

2. (uncommon)To skim or slide along a surface.

   “[…] skiting down that steep slope. But it's one thing to slide down a steep slope and quite another thing to climb back up - as Mary Jane soon discovered. Try her hardest , she simply could not get up that hill; she slid down faster than she went up.”

   “[…] of rock shearing off and skiting down the cliff-face as a black guillotine blade.”

3. (Scotland, especially)To slip, such as on ice.

   “At this point I skited on a discarded banana and decided to use my eyes instead of my brains.”

   “... skited on a particularly hazardous weet bit o' the harbour and fell flat in […]”

   “... skited on the way and nearly took a tumble. Inside there's a fire, but the room's that big there's lacings of frost on all the windows. Forty beds reeking and heaving; devils dancing about and between. Devils waiting for souls[…]”

   “... skited on the slippery floor.”

   “... rain-soaked stone stairs, her boots skiting on the slick surface.”

4. To move swiftly; to move in leaps and bounds.

   “His very shuttle skytes boldly along, and clatters through in faithful time to the tune of his merrier shopmates!”

   “... flashy blades gae skytin' by, […]”

   “... he wasn't fit to be thravellin' the len'th of the ward, that indifferent he was, let alone skytin' over the ocean-says.”

   “'If ye'd rather, laddie, the dog will bring ye home,' […] 'Skite!' said Dick, with sullen scorn; but he went quietly after that.”

5. To pop, to quickly or briefly make a trip to.

   “[…] skiting over to Europe and back before you know it, taking notes on the way going and coming .”

   “... skiting over to Hartford City and back in a day. I don't suppose we could hear all of it, but we heard most of it. We turned the corner on Madison Street, came up Washington, got to the front of the house, and Grandfather stopped the[…]”

   “... skited over with empty suitcases for a shopping trip just before Christmas.”

6. (Scotland, slang)To drink a large amount of alcohol.
7. (archaic, vulgar)To defecate, to shit.

   “There is no need of wiping ones taile (said Gargantua), but when it is foule; foule it cannot be unlesse one have been a skiting; skite then we must before we wipe our tailes.”