Other forms: pelts, pelted, pelting
To pelt is to throw things hard at somebody, or for rain to fall heavily. Pelt them with stones, pelting down, pelting rain.
Throwing is the older sense and the rain one is a metaphor from it — it is pelting down is the standard British way of saying it is raining very hard. At full pelt means at top speed. As a noun, a pelt is an animal skin with the fur still on, which is a separate word entirely and the one furriers use.
1verbpeltTo throw things hard at somebody, or to rain heavily.
“The children pelted each other with snowballs.”
2nounanimalAn animal skin with the fur still on.
“The trapper sold a bundle of fox pelts at the market.”
pelt is a throwing, or a skin.
The noun pelt, an animal skin, comes from Middle English and ultimately Latin pellis, a skin. The verb's origin is separate and uncertain.
Proto-Indo-European
*pel-
Middle English
pelt — skin of a sheep, especially without the wool
English, today
pelt
The noun is inherited from Middle English pelt (“skin of a sheep, especially without the wool”); further etymology unknown, possibly:
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire