Other forms: skittering, skitters
To skitter is to move lightly and quickly with small steps. Skitter across the floor, leaves skittering, the mouse skittered away.
The lightness matters — something heavy cannot skitter — and it suits insects, small animals, dry leaves and stones on ice. A stone skittering across water is also skipping. The word is probably a frequentative of an old Scots verb meaning to dart.
1verbskitterTo move lightly and quickly with small steps.
“A mouse skittered across the kitchen floor and disappeared under the fridge.”
skitter is a way of moving.
Probably a frequentative of skite, a Scots verb meaning to dart or move obliquely.
Built from
Possibly a frequentative of skite (“to move lightly and hurriedly; to move suddenly, particularly in an oblique direction”) Scotland. The noun is derived from the verb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire