Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An oblong court in which the game of skittles is played.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word skittle-alley.
Examples
-
That Italian gentleman of the world, with his bowler hat, his skittle-alley, his gramophone, who had planted himself down in this temple of wild harmony, was he not Progress itself — the blind figure with the stomach full of new meats and the brain of raw notions?
-
But, since you have this theory of life, you may not despise any one or any thing, not even a skittle-alley, for they are all threaded to you, and to despise them would be to blaspheme against continuity, and to blaspheme against continuity would be to deny Eternity.
-
Why, then, despise the skittle-alley, the gramophone, those expressions of the spirit of my friend in the billy-cock hat?
-
Blonde, the flesh and bone, without which the master brain must still have lain stranded, were to have a grand supper in the covered skittle-alley, as the joints came away from their betters, this lower deck being in command of Captain Tugwell, who could rouse up his crew as fast as his lordship roused his officers.
Springhaven Richard Doddridge 2004
-
Sweeping a glance over the skittle-alley, he sent forth a long puff of smoke; then, turning to my companion (of the politer sex) with the air of one who has made himself perfect master of a foreign tongue, he smiled, and spoke.
-
To the familiar simplicity of that Italian building there were not lacking signs of a certain spiritual change, for out of the olive-grove which grew to its very doors a skittle-alley had been formed, and two baby cypress-trees were cut into the effigies of a cock and hen.
-
This man, a Christian, had formerly been a weaver of velvet, but finding that a living could not in any way be made out of it, in an evil hour he was tempted to go into a skittle-alley as a helper.
God's Answers A Record of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada Clara M. S. Lowe
-
When I finally grew tired of waiting I stepped through a lattice gate, always hanging aslant and always creaky, into a garden plot running along close by the skittle-alley and parallel with it.
The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 Various
-
There was a much frequented skittle-alley there, where women played as well as men.
The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 Various
-
There were two bowling-greens in it, and a skittle-alley.
Recollections of Old Liverpool A Nonagenarian
chained_bear commented on the word skittle-alley
"'Killick,' said Aubrey, 'sea-chest for tomorrow at dawn; and pass the word for Bonden.'
"'Sea-chest for tomorrow at dawn it is, sir; and Bonden to report to the skittle-alley,' replied Killick ... There were no bowling-greens in the remote estuarine hamlet where Preserved Killick had been born, but there was, and always had been, a skittle-alley; and this was the term he used..."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen Gun Salute, 15
March 3, 2008