Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To strike, especially with the open hand; slap; spank.
  • To kick severely.
  • To beat, as a clock.
  • To move rapidly or briskly along; hurry; run; bound.
  • To leap awkwardly.
  • noun A slap: a stroke; a blow.
  • noun A squall; a heavy fall of rain.
  • noun A large portion. Compare skelper, 2, and skelping. Jamieson.
  • noun A strip of iron prepared for making a pipe or tube by bending it round a bar and welding it. Those made for gun-barrels are thicker at one end than at the other.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb Scot. To strike; to slap.
  • transitive verb To form into skelp, as a plate or bar of iron by rolling; also, to bend round (a skelp) in tube making.
  • noun Prov. Eng. A blow; a smart stroke.
  • noun Scot. A squall; also, a heavy fall of rain.
  • noun A wrought-iron plate from which a gun barrel or pipe is made by bending and welding the edges together, and drawing the thick tube thus formed.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A narrow strip of rolled or forged metal, ready to be bent and welded to form a pipe.
  • verb transitive, Scotland To beat or slap.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Probably imitative.

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Examples

  • The skelp is a piece or bar of iron, about three feet long, and four inches wide, but thicker and broader at one end than at the other; and the barrel of a musket is formed by forging out such pieces to the proper dimensions, and then folding or bending them into a cylindrical form, until the edges overlap, so that they can be welded together.

    On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures Charles Babbage 1831

  • Give each other's children a skelp across the ear, impose and police standards of behaviour across the community.

    The damage done in the name of compassion 2008

  • He'll be after you down the street, trying to skelp you about the head with a brolly...

    Peer of the realm? 2007

  • An 'altiye, if I fuckin' fin 'any fags, you're gettin' a fuckin 'skelp, man.

    Boiling a frog Brookmyre, Christopher, 1968- 2000

  • An 'altiye, if I fuckin' fin 'any fags, you're gettin' a fuckin 'skelp, man.

    Boiling a Frog Brookmyre, Christopher, 1968- 2000

  • An 'altiye, if I fuckin' fin 'any fags, you're gettin' a fuckin 'skelp, man.

    Boiling a Frog Brookmyre, Christopher, 1968- 2000

  • Sandy ga'e him a clap on the hurdles to quieten him, but aye the hent feet o 'him played skelp on the boddom o' the cairt, till I thocht he wudda haen't ca'd a 'to bits.

    My Man Sandy J. B. Salmond

  • Twa bairnies, twa callans, that skelp o'er the leas,

    The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. The Songs of Scotland of the past half century Various

  • Why, this afternoon, he jest tore a gentleman's skelp clean off his head, and he was borne out in a fainting condition.

    Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers Various

  • "I was juist comin 'oot at the kirk door," says I, "when the minister cam 'skelp up again' me."

    My Man Sandy J. B. Salmond

Comments

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  • After I got skelped, I got helped.

    August 14, 2008

  • And for what inadequate reason she had caused all this commotion! Just because her two sons quarrelled! She could have prevented that easily enough if she had brought them up properly and skelped them when they needed it.

    - Rebecca West, The Judge

    September 12, 2009