skift meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

skift

noun

/skɪft/

Etymology From Scots skift (“light shower of rain or snow”), related to skiff (“light rain, snow, etc”) (which see for more) and skiffle.

Appalachia, Scotland, Shetland, Dialectal, Including Synonym of skiff (“light shower of rain or snow; light dusting of snow or ice (on ground, water, etc)”).

Last night we had a little skift of snow.1834, record quoted in 1956, Norman E. Eliason, Tarheel Talk, page 294
Well, there was a little skift of snow on the ground, and I follered up a ridge of the mountain […]1857, “A Winter in the South”, in Harper's Magazine, page 726:

4 more examples

It was quite cold that morning; just a little skift of snow. We had not gone a mile from camp before we were overtaken by a score or more of boys going home to Missouri. They had been up to the Wakarusa camp — the pro-slavery troops were ...1915, Ed Blair, History of Johnson County, Kansas, page 61:
A “Skift” of Snow LAST night we had a “skift” of snow, and it was interesting to notice the effect on the summer-born creatures of the farm. A plump young kitten that had not seen the pesky stuff before came to meet me from the stable ...1919, Peter McArthur, The Red Cow and Her Friends, Createspace Independent Pub, page 244:
We just got out on the top and there was a little skift of snow a-fallin'.1939, Coll, Hall:
[...] money from the Appalachian Community Development Association and from Cincinnati's Tall Stacks Festival, so I rented a car and stayed in a motel instead of sleeping on somebody's floor. There was just a little skift of snow on the ground.2001, Cincinnati Magazine, page 80:

skift

verb

Etymology From Scots skift (“light shower of rain or snow”), related to skiff (“light rain, snow, etc”) (which see for more) and skiffle.

Dialectal, Of rain or snow Synonym of skiff (“fall lightly or briefly, and lightly cover the ground”).

A mourning dove had returned to him through snow, skifting over cold earth. It settled on a limb and began dressing its plumage.1911, Gene Stratton-Porter, The Harvester, page 46:
[…] Violent gusts of wind came in rapid succession down the sound of Kilbrannan ; and a skifting rain, flung fitfully but fiercely from the huge black clouds as they hurried along before the tempest that ...1921, Ernest Rhys, The Haunters & the Haunted: Ghost Stories and Tales of the Supernatural, page 153

3 more examples

A crest of last night's snow skifts the powerlines, lengths of it falling to clean asphalt broken and askew, shattered grammar of a landscape whose unheard mutter might explain.1997, Southern Poetry Review, volumes 37-38, page 20:
THE PIGEONS SCATTERED as I walked onto the University of Washington campus, crossing the snow skifted plaza of Red Square with an important document tucked under my arm.2013, Carlene Cross, Fleeing Fundamentalism: A Minister's Wife Examines Faith:
Surely a sound like this could only bring cold and skifting rain: it seemed past belief that such a lonely sound could come hurtling through the darkness on a breath as stifling as a furnace. No candle flickered in the windows of the large building ...2019, Elizabeth Mac Donald, A Matter of Interpretation, Fairlight Books, →ISBN:

Dialectal, Obsolete, Possibly To shift; to move or remove.

Aw could like yo to skift, afore aw […]1867, Edwin Waugh, Owd Blanket, page 10:
And a man mun keep watch at t mill toft / To stiddy his mouter-dish — help him to sift it, / And see it's o' tidily done; / And gedder up offal, and heàmmward to skift it, / And hev sooins as sure as a gun.1875, William Dickinson, Cumbriana; Or, Fragments of Cumbrian Life, page 231:

2 more examples

[…] teeap wed tak a reet good rin at em, heed brek t' woes wi his heead. Bet he mud rin a gae lang while afooar heed stir a steean i' oor hoose. Ya can haardly skift em [steeans] wi booarin an blastin. It's a varra lang while — a caant tell ya hoo lang — […]1887, Thomas Clarke, Specimens of the Dialect of Westmorland, page 1:
Ay, he left me drunk t other neet, an' he came back i' a two - three minutes after sober; an' when a man gets skifted out o' liquor so speedy-like, he gets a sort o' hatred on't. Leastways, that's what I've noticed more nor once, an' […]1900, Halliwell Sutcliffe, Shameless Wayne, page 103: