Other forms: skipped, skipping, skips
To skip is to move along in light hops, one foot and then the other, the way a child does going down a path. The other skip is leaving something out: you skip a chapter, skip breakfast, skip to the good part.
With a rope, skipping is the jumping game with the rope going under your feet — Americans call it jump rope. A flat stone skips across water when it bounces off the surface instead of sinking. In Britain a skip is the huge open metal container that sits in the street while a house is being emptied, and half the neighbourhood has a look inside it. To skip school is to stay away without permission, and to skip town is to leave in a hurry to get away from trouble. Keep it apart from slip and step: you slip on ice, you step over a puddle, you skip because you are pleased about something.
1verbskipTo move forward with light hops from one foot to the other.
“She skipped along beside him, holding on to one finger.”
2verbjumpTo jump over a rope that you swing under your feet.
“Boxers skip for twenty minutes before they touch a bag.”
3verbmissTo leave something out, or not do something you would normally do.
“I skipped lunch and regretted it by three o'clock.”
4verbbounceTo bounce along a surface instead of sinking into it.
“The flat stone skipped four times before it went under.”
5nounlargeA large open metal container for builders' rubbish, left standing in the street.
“The old kitchen units went straight into the skip.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Skip came into Middle English as skippen from the Norse side of the family, from Proto-Germanic *skupjaną and, behind that, the Proto-Indo-European root *ksewbʰ-, 'to push, throw, shake'. The related *skuppōną meant to move in repeated pushes, which is exactly what skipping looks like from the outside. Shove is a cousin, and Icelandic skopa still means to take a run at something.
Proto-Indo-European
*ksewbʰ- — to push, throw, shake
Proto-Germanic
*skupjaną
Middle English
skippen
English, today
skip
Built from
From Middle English skippen, skyppen, of gmq - origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic skupjaną, perhaps related to skeubaną (“to drive, push”), iterative skuppōną (“to push/move repeatedly, skip”), from Proto-Indo-European ksewbʰ- (“to push, throw, shake”). Related to Icelandic skopa (“to take a run”), gmq-osw skuppa (“to skip”), modern dialectal Swedish skopa, skimpa (“to skip, leap”), and shove. See also dialectal skimp (“to mock”) (Etymology 1), considered by some to be related.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA