Meaning of Skiff | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A small flat-bottomed open boat with a pointed bow and square stern.
2. A light, fleeting shower of rain or snow, or gust of wind, etc.
3. An act of slightly pruning tea bushes, placing new leaves at a convenient height without removing much woody growth.
4. A surname.
5. Any of various types of boats small enough for sailing or rowing by one person.
6. A (typically light) dusting of snow or ice (or dust, etc) (on ground, water, trees, etc).

Equivalents

Examples

“Old Applegate, in the stern, just set and looked at me, and Lord James, amidship, waved both arms and kept hollering for help. I took a couple of everlasting big strokes and managed to grab hold of the skiff's rail, close to the stern.”

“As Hiro is entering their neighborhood, he sees men running down the undulating pontoon bridge that serves as the main street, carrying guns and knives. The local constabulary. More men of the same description emerge from the byways and skiffs and sampans, joining them.”

“I went alone into a Shepherd's boat, A skiff that to a willow-tree was tied Within a rocky cave, its usual home […]”

“Graceful old houses stand by the edge of the Great Ouse and gaze down at the houseboats, skiffs and motor-cruisers that moor there.”

“A skiff of rain blew into the shed and the two men moved their chairs back.”

“A little on again, off again, skiff of rain made the road slippery in spots.”

“Meadowlarks are in full voice, as are all manner of ducks, geese and gulls; with just a skiff of wind, sound travels a long way on mornings such as this.”

“A lashing skiff of rain sheeted across the desert, a gift from the heavens that cooled my skin and allowed some color to return to the world. It was enough to combat the smell of creosote, but not enough to sustain the land, so the desert lay back ...”

“At sunrise there was a slight skiff of ice on some water in a bucket; […]”

“There was a light skiff of snow on the ground. The air was filled with flying flakes, which stung his cheeks sharply. A little streak of red was beginning to show in the east, and somewhere, far away, he heard a chicken crow sleepily.”

“Bring a natural-looking touch of snow indoors by using your fingertips to lightly spread White Christmas Snow along the tops of the branches on your Christmas tree. To create a light skiff of snow on a six-foot noble fir, double the recipe.”

“A thick skiff of dust covered the contents of the room and revealed hundreds of tracks made by very large rodents.”

“It was getting time to start trapping and Hawk was getting anxious. Fall was everywhere from the yellow aspens, to the skiff of ice on the beaver ponds in the morning. Elk could be heard bugling up and down the valley […]”

“... the shore of Pontchartrain, dripping blood heavily into the inland sea, and watching as a crystal path hurtled forward across the lake, six feet wide, as thin as the skiff of ice on a basin left in the window on the night of the first freeze of autumn.”

“A skiff of new snow coats the ground.”

“When I woke up this morning what did I see? A skiff of snow on the evergreen tree”

“Otherwise, whenever we woke up to a skiff of fresh snow in the garden, maybe a couple of times in a winter, we would run outside to make snowmen and snow forts, feeling alive in the cool snowy air.”

“The next morning the men awoke to find a light skiff of snow on the ground. This event heightened the anxiety of the men in getting things finished on the house in preparation for departure.”

“Later, she'd seen the snow on Saint Lawrence Island, the snow on the Olympics, the powder high in the Cascades, the Brooks Range, the Maine snow, the Rocky Mountain snow, the blowing around high plains snow, the deep snow at her home in Idaho, the hushed snow in the boreal forest of Northern Canada, the sea-driven snow at Prince Ruper and Ketchikan, Nome, Kotzebue, and Valdez, snow in the Arctic adhering to the now vanishing ice, the dry skiff of snow on the Alaskan tundra stitched by the silvery, needle-like oil pipeline.”

“The track was in the snow next to the line of rock brushed clean by the wind playing along the edge. Uriah saw it, too, and he knelt to examine the track. It was huge, five or six inches across, and clear in the skiff of snow.”

“A thick skiff of snow lay over the world, and the big stars looked down on the weirdly wild scene. A long howl quivered through the night. It was quickly answered by a wild ululation from all directions. A big wolf—a fierce lobo of the Texas frontier—slipped out of the brush […]”

“The hoarfrost was heavy on the willow trees and there was a skiff of snow on the ice surface.”

“It will grow almost anywhere it can get a toehold; I once saw rye growing in a 0.4-inch (1 cm)-deep skiff of dust on a tractor blade. Farmers call these unplanned plants “volunteers,” and you can sometimes see them […]”

“In the fourth year, "light skiff" pruning removes just the uppermost growth.”

“The sequence of the 3-year pruning cycle is light pruning; light skiff; and deep skiff[…]”

CEFR level