Other forms: skippers
The skipper is the person in charge of a boat. Ask the skipper, the skipper decided to turn back, a fishing skipper.
It is the everyday word where captain is the formal one, and it is used on fishing boats, yachts and small craft rather than ships. In British sport, the skipper is the captain of a team, and it is standard in football and cricket commentary. As a verb, to skipper is to be in command: he skippered the boat for eleven seasons. Note that the skipper carries legal responsibility for the vessel and everybody on it.
1nounskipperThe person in charge of a boat.
“The skipper turned back about two miles out.”
2nouncaptainThe captain of a sports team.
“The skipper won the toss and chose to bat.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
skipper is a person in charge.
Middle Dutch scipper comes from scip, a ship — a skipper is a shipper in the oldest sense of the word. English borrowed it in the fourteenth century along with a great deal of other North Sea sailing vocabulary.
Proto-Indo-European
*skey-
Proto-Germanic
*skipārijaz
Old Dutch
*skipāri
Middle Dutch
scipper
Middle English
skippere
English, today
skipper
From Middle English skippere, skyppere, scippere, borrowed from Middle Dutch scipper, schipper, from Old Dutch skipāri, from Proto-Germanic skipārijaz. shipper, from ship + -er.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA