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Skim   /skɪm/   Listen
Skim

verb
(past & past part. skimmed; pres. part. skimming)
1.
Travel on the surface of water.  Synonym: plane.
2.
Move or pass swiftly and lightly over the surface of.  Synonym: skim over.
3.
Examine hastily.  Synonyms: glance over, rake, run down, scan.
4.
Cause to skip over a surface.  Synonyms: skip, skitter.
5.
Coat (a liquid) with a layer.
6.
Remove from the surface.  Synonyms: cream, cream off, skim off.
7.
Read superficially.  Synonym: skim over.



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"Skim" Quotes from Famous Books



... hear, General Dingo seemed to be kindly contributing some noise while we feasted. There were guns going off around town, and pretty soon we heard that cannon go 'BOOM!' just as he said it would. And then men began to skim along the edge of the plaza, dodging in among the orange trees and houses. We certainly had things stirred up in Salvador. We felt proud of the occasion and grateful to General Dingo. Sterrett was about to take a bite off a juicy piece of rib when a bullet ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... were true that Messala had attained his utmost speed, the effort was with effect; slowly but certainly he was beginning to forge ahead. His horses were running with their heads low down; from the balcony their bodies appeared actually to skim the earth; their nostrils showed blood red in expansion; their eyes seemed straining in their sockets. Certainly the good steeds were doing their best! How long could they keep the pace? It was but the commencement of the sixth round. On they dashed. As they ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... giovane; I am but repeating what I hear in my shop; as you may perceive, my eloquence is simply the cream which I skim off my clients' talk. Heaven forbid I should fetter my impartiality by entertaining an opinion. And for that same scholarly objection to the Greeks," added Nello, in a more mocking tone, and with a significant grimace, "the fact is, you are heretics, Messer; jealousy has nothing to do with it: ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... not a calf we have; we will not spoil his dinner. But you may skim it and give him ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... airship would skim along on the level, and again it would be pitched and tossed about, until it was all the occupants could do to keep their feet. Mr. Damon was continually blessing everything ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton

... strain, on the track, neck and neck, on the home-stretch, With nostrils distended, and mane froth-flecked, and the neck and the shoulders, Each urged to his best by the cry and the whip and the rein of his rider, Now they skim o'er the waters and fly, side by side, neck and neck, through the meadows. The blue heron flaps from the reeds, and away wings her course up the river; Straight and swift is her flight o'er the meads, but she hardly outstrips ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... milk dried into a kind of paste to carry with them; and when they need food they put this in water, and beat it up till it dissolves, and then drink it. [It is prepared in this way; they boil the milk, and when the rich part floats on the top they skim it into another vessel, and of that they make butter; for the milk will not become solid till this is removed. Then they put the milk in the sun to dry. And when they go on an expedition, every man takes some ten pounds of this ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... both looked up to ascertain the reason for this sudden departure, when we were startled to see a tall, bearded man with a long staff in his hands, skimming down the snow-covered slope of the mountain towards us. One glance showed us that it was our friend, the hermit, though how he could skim over the snow like that without moving his feet was a puzzle to us, until, on approaching to within twenty yards of where we sat, he stuck his staff into the snow and checked his speed, when we perceived that he was ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... quarts of water, three onions cut small, one spoonful of black pepper pounded, and two of salt, with two or three slices of lean ham; let it boil steadily two hours; skim it occasionally, then put into it a shin of veal, let it boil two hours longer; take out the slices of ham, and skim off the grease if any should rise, take a gill of good cream, mix with it two table-spoonsful of flour very nicely, and the yelks of two eggs beaten well, ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph

... quivering play'd, And nodding cypress form'd a fragrant shade: On whose high branches, waving with the storm, The birds of broadest wing their mansions form,— The chough, the sea-mew, the loquacious crow,— and scream aloft, and skim the deeps below. Depending vines the shelving cavern screen. With purple clusters blushing through the green. Four limped fountains from the clefts distil: And every fountain pours a several rill, In mazy windings wandering down the hill: Where bloomy meads with vivid ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... simple of culinary processes is not often performed in perfection. It does not require quite so much nicety and attendance as roasting; to skim your pot well, and keep it really boiling (the slower the better) all the while, to know how long is required for doing the joint, &c., and to take it up at the critical moment when it is done enough, comprehends almost the ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... and they crouched close together. Out upon the plain the shriek of the wind was weird and unearthly. Now and then some blast, fiercer and more tortuous than the rest, drove a fringe of snow so far into the hollow that it fell a wet skim ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... felt tempted to peruse the reports of these harangues in the piping times of peace, one assuredly had neither the inclination nor yet the leisure to indulge in such practices during the early days of the Great War. To skim off the cream of the morning's news while at breakfast was about as much as a War Office mandarin could manage in the way of reading the daily papers during that super-strenuous time. One morning, however—it must have ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... amusement. He never fairly plunged into the stream of school-education, but, by floating on the surface, imbibed a small tincture of those different sciences which his master pretended to teach. In short, he resembled those vagrant swallows that skim along the level of some pool or river, without venturing to wet one feather in their wings, except in the accidental pursuit of an inconsiderable fly. Yet, though his capacity or inclination was unsuited for studies of this kind, he did not fail to manifest a perfect genius ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... in the nest on the high bright tree Blazing with dawn and dew, She knoweth the gleam of the world and the glee As I drop like a bolt from the blue; She knoweth the fire of the level flight As I skim, close, close to the ground, With the long grass lashing my breast and the bright Dew-drops flashing around. She watcheth the hawk, the hawk, the hawk, (O, the red-blotched eggs in the nest!) Watcheth him sway in the sun's bright way; ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... were called on deck. Now one sail and now another was added,—some rigged out so as just to skim the surface of the water, while with buckets and scoops the sails were wetted as high as they could be reached. Harry and David could see in the far distance a large ship, which from her narrow yards and the cut of her sails Harry said he thought was really a merchantman, which of ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston

... received some of The Times' broad-sheets. I don't exactly know whether they are good or not. It is undoubtedly a benefit to have "bits" from great writers to skim over when you haven't the time, or the inclination, to wade through a volume. On the other hand, it is intensely aggravating to experience the feeling of incompleteness that naturally results from having your reading ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... Its proper name is the Coastal Motor Boat, or the C.M.B. for short. But the handy man knows it simply as the Scooter. The first scooters were only forty feet long, the next were fifty-five, the last were seventy. Everything about them is made as light as possible; so that they can skim along in about two feet of water at an outside speed of nearly fifty (land) miles an hour. They are really the thinnest of racing shells fitted with the strongest of lightweight engines. They are all armed with depth ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... to Rhoda, in her elegant fashion, "you are a bit of a German sausage, aren't you? Just read over that passage for me. I've been puzzling over it for the whole of the evening," and then would follow some blissful moments, when Rhoda would skim lightly over the difficulty, and feel the eyes of the girls fixed admiringly ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... down in the road to thar knees, but I guess they won't sink up to thar bodies. They may stumble an' throw us, but as we'll hit in soft mud it ain't likely to hurt us. It may rain hard, 'cause I see clouds heapin' up thar in the west. An' if it rains the cold may then freeze a skim of ice over the road, on which we could slip an' break our necks, hosses an' all. Then thar are some cliffs close to the road. If we was to slip on that thar skim of ice which we've reckoned might come, then mebbe we'd go over one of them cliffs and drop down a hundred feet or so right swift. ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... you are in earnest. But you know as well as I do that that is a mere figure of speech. You are never in earnest. You play all day long. You will do it all your life. You never do anything worth mentioning. Other people do the work. You simply skim the surface of things. You are merely ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... "she used to skim the cream for me, most mornings, when I'd be busy; and wash up the breakfast ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... noted a dark speck moving rapidly across the prairie toward the ranch house. It seemed to skim the ground and in five minutes had developed into a cow pony and its rider. A quarter of an hour later and the pony proved himself of "calico" variety, while the rider developed into a girl who bestrode her mount as though she were a part ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... bright dance of the waves. And now and then she heard what she knew to be the rush of a round shot far above her head, and following the sound saw a little silver fountain leap up into the sunshine and skim before the breeze; then glancing up the hill she saw the gray puff drifting, and presently felt the dull rumble of the air. At the root of the smoke-puffs, once or twice, she descried a stocky figure moving leisurely, and in spite of the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... known to history. A clipper costing $70,000 could pay for herself in one voyage, with freights at sixty dollars a ton. This gold stampede might last but a little while. To take instant advantage of it was the thing. The fastest ships, and as many of them as could be built, would skim the cream of it. This explains the brief and illustrious era of the California clipper, one hundred and sixty of which were launched from 1850 to 1854. The shipyards of New York and Boston were crowded with ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... feels the unspeakable comfort it is capable of affording, will agree with me that no other book, ancient or modern, can in the remotest degree be compared to it. Too many people read it merely as a matter of conscience. They skim over a chapter at a time with very little thought or reflection. Even that way may be better than neglecting it altogether, but surely that is not the way a book with consequences so immeasurably important depending on the truths it promulgates deserves ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... boil three or four hours very slowly; it should be put in cold water, and be kept covered during the whole process; a small ham will boil in two hours. All bacon requires much the same management,—and if you boil cabbage or greens with it, skim all the grease off the pot before you put them in. Ham or dried beef, if very salt, should be soaked several hours before cooking, and should be boiled in plenty ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... salt, one-half teaspoon peppercorns, a bit of bay leaf, one carrot sliced, one turnip sliced, and one-half onion sliced. Add two sprays each of parsley and thyme and one of marjoram. Cover and heat to boiling point. Skim when necessary. Reduce heat and simmer until meat is tender (four or five hours). Remove to serving platter. Strain stock and use for soup or sauces. Serve meat with hot Horseradish Sauce. (For ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller

... them from Taenarus came Euphemus whom, most swift-footed of men, Europe, daughter of mighty Tityos, bare to Poseidon. He was wont to skim the swell of the grey sea, and wetted not his swift feet, but just dipping the tips of his toes was borne on the ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... they call it, is let, and nobody knows anything about them. I took the trouble to go there, I assure you, on my own hook, to see if I could find out something. Toto nearly died of it, didn't you, darling? Not a drop of cream to be had for him, the poor angel; only a little nasty skim milk. But Mr. Tatham has the barbarity to smile," she went on, with a shrill outcry. "Fancy, Toto—the cruelty ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... water boiled and bubbled, and the Mouse King stood close beside the kettle—there was almost danger in it—and he put forth his tail, as the mice do in the dairy, when they skim the cream from a pan of milk, afterwards licking their creamy tails; but his tail only penetrated into the hot steam, and then he sprang ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... piqued, the night before, by Carolyn's tendency to linger on the scene and to help skim the emotional ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... my body into three pieces there will come a messenger, to bid him to the King, so he will lay my flesh in a cauldron of brass and set it upon a brasier before going to the presence and he will say to thee, 'Keep up the fire under the cauldron till the scum rise; then skim it off and pour it into a phial to cool. Wait till it cool and then drink it, so shall naught of malady or pain be left in all thy body. When the second scum riseth, skim it off and pour it into a phial ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... thin skin forms over the top of the syrup, skim it off before draining the goods; it may tend to granulate them, but the damp cloth ought to prevent ...
— The Candy Maker's Guide - A Collection of Choice Recipes for Sugar Boiling • Fletcher Manufacturing Company

... has left the land, Expelled his kingdom; that the shore lies clear Of foes, and homes are ready to our hand. Ortygia's port we leave, and skim the mere; Soon Naxos' Bacchanalian hills appear, And past Olearos and Donysa, crowned With trees, and Paros' snowy cliffs we steer. Far-scattered shine the Cyclades renowned, And clustering isles thick-sown in ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... it in a large vessel till the scum rises. Skim this off as fast as it appears on the surface, until the butter remains quite clear, like oil. It should then be carefully poured off, that the impurities which settle at the bottom of the vessel ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... fatten more quickly; and where they bought up all the old rancid butter left over in the grocery stores of a continent, and "oxidized" it by a forced-air process, to take away the odor, rechurned it with skim milk, and sold it in bricks in the cities! Up to a year or two ago it had been the custom to kill horses in the yards—ostensibly for fertilizer; but after long agitation the newspapers had been able to make the public ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... hidden in a hollow a few rods away. Here he showed her his ice-houses, his huge churns, and his mammoth "separator" that went whirling around, dividing the cream from hundreds of gallons of milk in the time it would have taken her to skim ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... Allegheny Mountains and the broad plains of the Ohio and the Mississippi, we saw crawling beneath us from west, south and north, an endless succession of railway trains bearing their multitudes on toward Washington. With marvelous speed we rushed westward, rising high to skim over the snow-topped peaks of the Rocky Mountains and then the glittering rim of the Pacific was before us. Half-way between the American Coast and Hawaii we met the fleets coming from China and Japan. Side by side they were plowing the main, having forgotten, or laid aside, all the ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... horses drink and cool their legs, I saw a huge eel hidden under the shadow of a high overhanging bank, waiting till the evening to come out and feed upon the myriads of flies and little white moths that skim over the surface of ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... gulfs profound, With nimble glide the skaiters play; O'er treacherous Pleasure's flowery ground Thus lightly skim, and haste away. ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... the market and fair— We meet in the morning and night— He sits on the half of my chair, And my people are wild with delight; Yet I long through the winter to skim, Though Eoghan longs more I can see, When I will be married to him, And he will be married to me. Then, Oh! the marriage, the marriage, With love and mo bhuachaill for me, The ladies that ride in a carriage, Might envy my ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... partake of his popularity, and to be caressed by every hand. Indeed, he was quite a different animal the moment he touched the land. Here he was at home; here he was of consequence. He barked, he leaped, he frisked about his old friends, and then would skim round the place in a wide circle, ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... gods, which grind not so slowly but ofttimes exceeding fine, were about done with their grinding; and as the last of the grist came through the hopper, the last of the afternoon sunlight came sifting in through the windows at the west, thin and pale as skim milk. One after another the culprits, patrolmen mainly, had been arraigned on charges preferred by a superior officer, who was usually a lieutenant or a captain, but once in a while an inspector, full-breasted and gold-banded, like a fat blue ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... understood and applauded. In all countries the middle class presents the public which, fighting the world, and with a good footing in the fight, knows the world best. It may be the most selfish, but that is a question leading us into sophistries. Cultivated men and women, who do not skim the cream of life, and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harsher blows, make acute and balanced observers. Moliere ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Regicide Peace" and consult the title-page, you will find them ostensibly addressed to 'a Member of the present Parliament'; and the opening paragraphs assume that Burke and his correspondent are in general agreement. But skim the pages and your eyes will be arrested again and again by sentences ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... sawdusty horses, which was never in any other place in the world, salutes my nose with painful distinctness. What do you think of my suddenly finding myself a swimmer? But I have really made the discovery, and skim about a little blue bay just below the town here, like a fish in high spirits. I hope to preserve my bathing-dress for your inspection and approval, or possibly to enrich your collection of Italian costumes ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... upward. Two sharp winged points were skimming through the air. He felt a thrill—the thrill of the unknown. He knew it must be one of the craft, foreign as yet to the hill country. In the distance he saw it swirl, loop and maneuver, spiral gracefully downward, skim the earth lightly, rise again and then descend from sight hidden by one ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... steed along the drawbridge flies, 65 Just as it trembles on the rise; Nor lighter does the swallow skim Along the smooth lake's level brim: And when Lord Marmion reached his band, He halts, and turns with clenched hand, 70 And shout of loud defiance pours, And shook his gauntlet ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... supreme moment came for me when they were exactly opposite the grand stand, full half a mile away—the moment that I remembered from year to year as one of exquisite illusion—for then the horses seemed to lift from the earth as with wings, and to skim over the track like a covey of low-flying birds. The finish was tame to this. Mrs. March and I had our wonted difference of opinion as to which horse had won, and we were rather uncommonly controversial ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... earnestness made him win a temporary appointment. Thereupon he worked and studied so hard and so devotedly, while he daily taught, that within a few months he was regularly employed there. "And now," says Conwell, abruptly, with his characteristic skim-ming over of the intermediate details between the important beginning of a thing and the satisfactory end, "and now that young man is ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... from the grapes. Separate the pulp from the skins. Cook the pulp 5 minutes and then rub through a sieve that is fine enough to hold back the seeds. Put the water, skins, and pulp into the preserving kettle and heat slowly to the boiling-point. Skim the fruit and then add the sugar. Boil 15 minutes. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario

... the golden butterflies skim over, And poise, all fondly, on these lifted lips, Leaving the riches of the sweet red clover For the blue ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... stood looking round her, not able to identify the landscape because she was still confused a little, and then walked softly on, all the time afraid lest she should awake and lose the sweetness of it all, and the sense of rest and happiness. She felt so light, so airy, as if she could skim across the field like any child. It was bliss enough to breathe and move with every organ so free. After more than fifty years of hard service in the world to feel like this, even in a dream! She smiled to herself at her own pleasure; ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant

... aft smiling and unlashed the tiller, altering their course a little, so that as the evening breeze freshened they seemed literally to skim along the ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... caldron hangs over the fire on a low hearth; various figures appear in the vapour rising from it. A FEMALE MONKEY sits beside the caldron to skim it, and watch that it does not boil over. The MALE MONKEY with the young ones is seated near, warming himself. The walls and ceiling are adorned with the ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... if a recollection of Peggy's mischievous flight of a few days previously had occurred to him—Mortlake swung the delicate silvery machine about and dashed straight down at the boy and girl standing by the garden gate. So close to their heads did he skim in his desire to show off, that he almost came too low. For one instant it looked as if the machine would be dashed to a premature end, but it recovered buoyancy like a keeled-over racing yacht, and tore upward into the sky ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... whose boldness visibly increases with our necessities. What, therefore, I should infer from this extraordinary present is this: they intimate that unless, like the mouse, you can dig your passage through the earth, or skim the air like the bird, or glide through waters with the fish, you shall certainly perish by the Scythian arrows.' Such was the sentiment of Gobrias, and all the assembly was struck with the evident truth of his interpretation, and the king himself began to perceive ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... grotesque fun; but those who know much of literary work are well aware that a writer may very easily become possessed by a sick disgust of books which never leaves him. He will look at volumes of extracts, he will skim poetry, he will read eagerly for a few days or weeks in order to get up a subject; but the pure delight in literature for its own sake has left him, and he is as decidedly prosaic a tradesman as his own hosier. Such a man soon ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... how the skaters slide, And skim the glitt'ring surface as they go: Thus o'er life's specious pleasures lightly glide, But pause not, press not on the ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... are to be away up here, where we can skim along at the rate of thirty miles an hour easily, without half trying, and snap our fingers at all those things. I tell you, Frank, this aviation business is the greatest thing that ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy

... in vain; a new gust of passion possessed the ardent young creature and would have vent. She reddened from bosom to brow, and the scalding tears ran down her flaming cheeks, and she repeated between her clenched teeth, "My veins are not filled with skim-milk, I can tell you: you have seen how I can love, you shall see how I can hate." And with this she went haughtily out of the room, not to expose the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... myself in spite of my sorrows. The sun was low and creamy, and the snow was so white and the shadows so slender and blue. All through the lovely Stillwater woods was a fine frosty stillness. It was splendid to skim down those long wonderful avenues of crusted snow, with the mossy grey boles on either hand, and overhead the lacing, leafless boughs, I just drank in the air and the beauty until my very soul was thrilling, and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... stretch of level ground then, smooth and hard; and the horses as with common consent set out to gallop shoulder to shoulder in a wild, exhilarating skim across the plain. Talking was impossible. The man reflected that he was making great strides in experience, first a prayer and then a pledge, all in the wilderness. If any one had told him he was going into the West for this, he would ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... or strokes, will make easy reading of Chinese impossible. It is a mistake to suppose that the Chinese have to "spell their way" laboriously through the written character so familiar to them: it is just as easy to "skim over" a Chinese newspaper in a few minutes as it is to "take in" the leading features of the Times in the same limited time; and volumes of Chinese history or literature in general can be "gutted" quite easily, owing to the facility with which the so-called pictographs, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... one pound salt pork, and one pound mutton; cut into pieces about three inches by two, let it boil, and skim. Take two or three carrots, one large turnip, one large head of celery, three or four leeks, a good green cabbage, cut in four, the other vegetables cut into pieces of moderate size, not too small; put them in with the meat, and see that they are first covered by the water. ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various

... thy song? She answered not, but blew her shell again; Then thus renewed the desultory strain: Yes, yes, we must forget! the world is wide; My music now shall be the dashing tide: 100 In the calm of the deep I will frolic and swim— With the breath of the South o'er the sea-blossom[225] skim. If ever, stranger, on thy way, Sounds, more than earthly sweet, thy soul should move, It is the youth! Oh! do not say— That poor Olola died for love. Lautaro stretched his hand; she said, Adieu! And o'er the glimmering rocks like lightning flew. He followed, and still heard at distance ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... pounds of beef add six quarts of cold water and place over the fire. Just before it boils, skim it carefully. Then add two cups of cold water and skim again, repeating this for a third skimming. Allow it to simmer slowly for three hours. Then add the vegetables; eight ounces each of cut up carrots, onions and turnips, ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden

... wasted. They bought a cow for his sole use and benefit, and guarded it like a sacred animal but to no purpose. He drank of its milk and grew thinner than ever. Strange furrows began to appear on his tiny face, with shadows and a transparent tinge like the blue of skim-milk. As the pure air of Drayton did so little for him, Mrs. Nevill Tyson wondered how he would bear the change ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... god-father's will; henceforward he must work and earn for two. In his safe lay a brown-paper parcel containing the manuscript of a novel, unopened since the day when Gaisford so contumeliously flung it back at him. Eric carried the despised book into his bedroom and began to skim the pages. With his new sense of power, he would so re-write it that the doctor should eat humble-pie; and there would be a slice for Manders too. It was no good trying him with another version of the "Singing-Bird"; but "Mother's Son," which had lain neglected ever since it was sent back ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... a quick skim, if nothing more. Your reviewer has listened to the book several times, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... not a single iceberg is to be seen on this fantastic sea. Innumerable flocks of birds skim its surface, among them is a pelican which is shot. On a floating piece of ice is a bear of the Arctic species and of gigantic size. At last land is signalled. It is an island of a league in circumference, to which the name of Bennet ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... seat mentioned, and her twin brother began to hoist the mainsail of the Ice Bird. It ran up easily, and caught by the wind the craft began to skim over the surface of the lake like a ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope

... water over-night, two carrots, four onions, and a head of celery, all chopped small; season with pepper, but no salt, as the pork, if pork is used, will season the soup sufficiently; set the whole to boil very gently for at least three hours, taking care to skim it occasionally, and do not forget that the peas, etc., must be stirred from the bottom of the pot now and then; from three to four hours' gentle boiling will suffice to cook a good mess of this ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli

... who crosses the heath at night bend clown until his face comes on a level with the tufts of grass, and he will see a strange spectacle outline itself against the western sky. Owls with great, round wings skim over the ground, invisible to any one standing upright. Snakes glide about there, lithe, quick, with narrow heads uplifted on swanlike necks. Great turtles crawl slowly forward, hares and water-rats flee before preying beasts, and a fox bounds after a bat, ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... breed of hogs for pen feeding, shutting them up in small pens from the time they are little pigs and feeding them mostly on skim milk and slops? ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... smooth and sparkling sea, is excessively difficult to navigate; its surf looks no more than champagne foam, but a thousand quicksands and shoals lie beneath: there are breakers ahead for more than half the dainty pleasure-boats that skim their hour upon it; and the foundered lie by millions, forgotten, five fathoms deep below. The only safe ballast upon it is gold dust; and if stress of weather come on you, it will swallow you without ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... an amusement to me this first evening, scribbling as egotistically as usual about myself and my doings; so you must forgive me, as I know well your kind heart will do. I have managed to skim the newspaper, but had not heart to read all the bloody details. Good God! What will the end be? Perhaps we are too despondent here; but I must think you are too hopeful on your side of the water. I never believed the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... addition, granted the free use of the buildings. The clerk had sent in a quantity of candies and tobacco. The priest had given potatoes; the clergyman had supplied a copy of the Bible in syllabic characters; and the minister had given the silver-plated wedding ring. The nuns had presented a supply of skim-milk and butter. Mr. Spear provided jam, pickles, and coal-oil for the lamps. The Mounted Police contributed two dollars to pay for the "band"—the fiddle and the concertina—and ammunition enough for the feu de joie. The friends and relations had given ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... from the oil mill, amurca is a watery fluid full of dregs. It is the custom to store it in this state in earthen jars and fifteen days later to skim off the scum from the top and transfer this to other jars, an operation which is repeated at regular intervals twelve times during the following six months, taking care that the last skimming is done on the wane of the moon. Then it is boiled in a copper kettle over a slow fire until it is ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... whate'er its kind, Some lot, some part, some station is assigned The feathered race with pinions skim the air; Not so the mackerel, and still less the bear.... Ah! who has seen the mailed lobster rise, Clap her broad wings, and soaring claim the skies? When did the owl, descending from her bower, Crop, midst the fleecy flocks the tender flower; Or the young heifer plunge, with ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... vampires, bats and goat-suckers dart from their lonely retreat and skim along the trees on the river's bank. The different kinds of frogs almost stun the ear with their hoarse and hollow-sounding croaking, while the owls and goat-suckers lament and ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... scones and barley scones, and oaten farles, and russet pancakes. There were three boiled eggs for each of them; there was a segment of an immense currant cake ("a present from my guid brither last Hogmanay"); there was skim milk cheese; there were several kinds of jam, and there was a pot of dark-gold heather honey. "Try hinny and aitcake," said their hostess. "My man used to say he never fund onything as guid in ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... been dark for some hours by the time I hit the street and waved for a skim-copter. ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett

... your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrew'd and knauish spirit Cal'd Robin Good-fellow. Are you not hee, That frights the maidens of the Villagree, Skim milke, and sometimes labour in the querne, And bootlesse make the breathlesse huswife cherne, And sometime make the drinke to beare no barme, Misleade night-wanderers, laughing at their harme, Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Pucke, You do their worke, and they shall haue good lucke. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... after long illness is languid, passive, receptive of sweetness, but too weak to contain it. The tears well and fall as the dog barks in the hollow, the children skim after hoops, the country darkens and brightens. Beyond a veil it seems. Ah, but draw the veil thicker lest I faint with sweetness, Fanny Elmer sighed, as she sat on a bench in Judges Walk looking at Hampstead Garden Suburb. But the dog went on barking. The motor ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... crew, frae yon burn side, Those fairy scenes are no for you, by yon burn side; There fancy smooths her theme, By the sweetly murmuring stream, And the rock-lodged echoes skim, down by ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... get only a smattering of the secret of certain success if you just skim over the chapters, and skip whatever requires you to think hard in order to comprehend it all. But if you dig into the meaning of each sentence for the full idea, you will enrich yourself with constantly increasing ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... What cruelty to slaves! And black Frank thinks me cruel, too, when he meets me with a patronizing grin, and shows me the nicest vats of candy, and peels cane for me. Oh! very cruel! And so does Jules, when he wipes the handle of his paddle on his apron, to give "Mamselle" a chance to skim the kettles and learn how to work! Yes! and so do all the rest who meet us with a courtesy and "Howd'y, young Missus!" Last night we girls sat on the wood just in front of the furnace—rather Miriam and Anna did, while I sat in their laps—and with some twenty of all ages crowded around, we sang ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... of water-skates (1) that skim Sea-king's fields, more good as he, Shedding wounds' red stream, must stand In my way ere I shall wince. I, the golden armlets' warder, Snakelike twined around my wrist, Ne'er shall shun a foeman's faulchion Flashing bright in din ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders

... that dogs, and sometimes children, have been killed by its bite; but it has not generally been fatal to men. These snakes are fond of cream, and will wind their way into the dairy, and skim the milk-pans, and sometimes visit hen-roosts, and suck ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... god of dreams doth bring To the mind some restful thing, Breezes soft that rippling blow O'er ripe cornfields row by row, Murmuring rivers round whose brim Silvery sands the swallows skim, Or the drowsy circling sound Of old mill-wheels going round, Which with music steal the mind And ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... the gull Sweeps booming by, intent to cull Voracious, from the billows' breast, Marked far away, his destined feast. Behold him now, deep plunging, dip His sunny pinion's sable tip In the green wave; now highly skim With wheeling flight the water's brim; Wave in blue sky his silver sail Aloft, and frolic with the gale, Or sink again his breast to lave, And float upon the foaming wave. Oft o'er his form your eyes may roam, Nor know him from the feathery foam, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... wheat; of sapphire, emerald and jasper stones, each one dram; of hazel-nuts, two drams; of pellitory of Spain, shavings of ivory, calamus odoratus, each the quantity of twenty-nine grains of wheat; of honey or sugar a sufficient quantity. Boil down and skim off." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... wings, while she's spurred on by fear; The welkin rings; men, dogs, hills, racks, and woods In the full concert join. Now, my brave youths, Stripped for the chase, give all your souls to joy! See how their coursers, than the mountain roe More fleet, the verdant carpet skim; thick clouds Snorting they breathe; their shining hoofs scarce print The grass unbruised; when emulation fired, They strain, to lead the field, top the barred gate, O'er the deep ditch exulting bound, and brush The thorny-twining hedge; the riders ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... in due time the appetizing little meal made its appearance. Never did a minor's eye revel over his broad acres with more complacent enjoyment than did mine skim over the mutton and the muffin, the tea-pot, the trout, and the devilled kidney, so invitingly spread out before me. 'Yes,' thought I, as I smacked my lips, 'this is the reward of virtue; pickled pork ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... who seemed to have a dog farm, as the place was overrun with the animals. We needed some corn for the horses, and asked him if he had any to sell. He was a queer looking man, with hair the color of molasses candy, and skim-milk eyes. ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth

... the incidents rather than their absence. One day the first shoal of flying fish is seen—a flight of glittering birds that, flushed by the sudden approach of the vessel, skim away over the waters and turn in the cover of a white-topped wave. On another we crossed the Equator. Neptune and his consort boarded us near the forecastle and paraded round the ship in state. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... Rituparna Sat joyous with the speed, delightedly Marking the driving of the Prince: the eyes Attent; the hand so firm upon the reins; The skill so quiet, wise, and masterful; Great joy the Maharaja had to see. By stream and mountain, woodland-path and pool, Swiftly, like birds that skim in air, they sped; Till, as the chariot plunged, the Raja saw His shoulder-mantle falling to the ground; And—loath to lose the robe—albeit so pressed, To Nala cried he, "Let me take it up; Check the swift horses, wondrous charioteer; And bid ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... front, where, encountering a group of children, she requested to be shown the blind piper's cottage. Ten of them started at once to lead the way, and she was presently knocking at the half open door, through which she could not help seeing the two at their supper of dry oat cake and still drier skim milk cheese, with a jug of cold water to wash it down. Neither, having just left the gentlemen at their wine, could she help feeling the contrast between the dinner just over at the House and ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... go to prove this desert to have once been covered by the waters of the great inland sea that still, in places, laves its eastern borders with its briny flood. I am informed there are many miles of smooth, hard, salt-flats, over which a 'cycler could skim like a bird; but I scarcely think enough of bird-like skimming to go searching for it on the American Desert. A few miles east of Matlin the road leads over a spur of the Red Dome Range, from whence ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... light scamper of feet, and Maud raised herself swiftly and leaned forth in time to see an athletic little figure in navy blue wearing a jaunty Panama hat, skim like a bird over a sweeping Dorothy Perkins just coming into bloom and alight on one leg with the perfect poise of a winged ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... Steam, or Gas, or Stage, Hold, cabin, steerage, hencoop's cage— Tour, Journey, Voyage, Lounge, Ride, Walk, Skim, Sketch, Excursion, Travel-talk— For move you must! 'Tis now the rage, 20 The law and fashion of the Age. If you but perch, where Dover tallies, So strangely with the coast of Calais, With a good glass and knowing look, You'll soon get matter for a book! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... certain qualifications of course. A first-rate city house is a regular sanatorium. The only trouble is, that the little good-for-nothings that come of utterly used-up and worn-out stock, and ought to die, can't die, to save their lives. So they grow up to dilute the vigor of the race with skim-milk vitality. They would have died, like good children, in most average country places; but eight months of shelter in a regulated temperature, in a well-sunned house, in a duly moistened air, with good sidewalks to go about on in all weather, and four months of the cream of summer ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... one pound of resolution, two grains of common sense, two ounces of experience, a large sprig of time, and three quarts of cooling water of consideration. Set them over a gentle fire of love, sweeten it with sugar of forgetfulness, skim it with the spoon of melancholy, put it in the bottom of your heart, cork it with the cork of clean conscience. Let it remain and you will quickly find ease and be ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... pondering over this new development and trying to discover where it might lead. Under sharp commands the crew brought the schooner about on the starboard tack, for the wind was on the bow, and set a staysail between the fore and main masts. The splendid ship seemed to skim over the surface of the sea, touching only ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... boiling sugar would make one's mouth water as he passed, and the same assistants, never weary in well-doing, might be seen setting saucers of black jam upon the window-sill to "jeel," and receiving, as a kind of blackmail, another saucerful of "skim," which, I am informed, is really the refuse of the sugar, but, for all that, wonderfully toothsome. Bear with a countryman's petty foolishness, ye mighty people who live in cities, and whose dainties come from huge manufactories. Some man reading these pages will ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... our clean collars on, Willie never went near Myra again that night. After all, he seemed to be a diluted kind of a skim-milk sort of a chap, and I never wondered that Joe ...
— Options • O. Henry

... cows, but he had the milk sent in from a hundred more, and exactly as they return the skim milk in Denmark, so they return it in Finland. By a careful process of autumn calving, the Finnish dairymen manage to have most milk in the winter, when they make butter, which they send seventy miles by sledge to the nearest railway train, to be borne hence to Hang, the only port in Finland ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... the table—the coarse brown loaf, the pat of butter, the huge jug of skim milk, and the teapot full of weak tea. The children all came in hungry from school. Alison returned from her bedroom with red eyes. She cut the bread into thick slices, put a scrape of butter on each slice, and helped her brothers and sisters. The meal was a homely ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... From the green sea up to my hidden source About Arcadian forests; and will shew The channels where my coolest waters flow Through mossy rocks; where, 'mid exuberant green, I roam in pleasant darkness, more unseen Than Saturn in his exile; where I brim Round flowery islands, and take thence a skim Of mealy sweets, which myriads of bees Buzz from their honied wings: and thou shouldst please Thyself to choose the richest, where we might 1001 Be incense-pillow'd every summer night. Doff all sad fears, thou white deliciousness, And let us ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... the trees, no easy capture for their lawful owners. Meanwhile, I dashed forward whithersoever the horse took me. I remember, even amid my panic, what a delight it was to sit astride of so noble a beast, who seemed to scorn my weight, and skim the earth as lightly as if he carried a child. Had it been my own sorry nag I should long since have been ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... first step of passing adverse sentence or of rejecting through reason. To investigate in what way and through what motive forces such a transformation can be produced constitutes the problem of repression, which we need here only skim over. It will suffice to remark that such a transformation of affect occurs in the course of development (one may think of the appearance in infantile life of disgust which was originally absent), and ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... pleasant little excursion from Gurgan Point to the harbour; the sea was luckily calm, but there was sufficient breeze to enable The Kittiwake to skim over the water like her sea-gull namesake. The girls, who by this time had grasped the depths of their friend's plot, enjoyed the situation immensely. They were actually having their coveted sail in the very company of the dear lady who had so expressly forbidden ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... the fire and that will burn all the blackness out of it. Get the love of God into your hearts, and the fire of His Divine Spirit into your spirits to melt you down, as it were, and then the scum and the dross will come to the top, and you can skim them off. Two powers conquer my sin: the one is the blood of Jesus Christ, which washes me from all the guilt of the past; the other is the fiery influence of that Divine Spirit which makes me pure and clean ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... with their solemn forms, their costly fronts rich with the spoils of kingdoms, and softened with the magic of the midnight beam. The whole city too is poured forth for festival. The people lounge on the quays and cluster on the bridges; the light barks skim along in crowds, just touching the surface of the water, while their bright prows of polished iron gleam in the moonshine, and glitter in the rippling wave. Not a sound that is not graceful: the tinkle of guitars, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... of the times tends more and more to growing for general markets. The grower plants to skim a comparatively small return from a large area. This division of grape-growing is now well developed in America. Intensive grape-growing for local markets is not well developed. There are, however, many opportunities in America for easy triumphs in fruit-growing in the planting of vineyards for ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... little after the noontide is the Niblung host embayed, And betwixt the sheltering nesses the ocean-wind is laid: No whit they brook delaying: but their noblest and their best Toss up the shaven oar-blades, and toil and mock at rest: Full swift they skim the swan-mead till the tall masts quake and reel, And the oaken sea-burgs quiver from bulwark unto keel. It is Gunnar goes the foremost with the tiller in his hand, And beside him standeth Knefrud and laughs on Atli's land: And ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... follow the gale, and when it blows most heavily they are seen in greatest numbers. The colour is brown and white; the size about that of the swallow, whose motions oh the wing they resemble. They skim over the surface of the roughest sea, gliding up and down the undulations with astonishing swiftness. When they observe their prey, they descend flutteringly, and place the feet and the tips of the wings on the surface of the water. In this position I have ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... separate visits, can be easily explained on their hypothesis, and that no other possible cause suggests itself as yet. The same cause, it may be, has produced the submarine spring of petroleum, off the shore near Point Rouge, where men can at times skim the floating oil off the surface of the sea; the petroleum and asphalt of the Windward Islands and of Cuba, especially the well-known Barbadoes tar; and the petroleum springs of the mainland, described by Humboldt, at Truxillo, in the Gulf of Cumana; and 'the inexhaustible ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... perfectly wonderful to fly through the air," said Miss Nestor one day, when Tom and Mr. Damon had the Humming-Bird out on the testing ground, trying the engine, which had been keyed up to a higher pitch of speed. "I consider it perfectly marvelous, and I can't imagine how it must seem to skim along ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton

... She gave up the struggle: she was vanquished, and it was such sweet comfort to her! ... They wept silently as they sat listening to the music under the moving canopy of the heavy clouds, which in their noiseless flight seemed to skim the tops of the trees. They thought of all that they had suffered, and perhaps—who knows?—of all that they were to suffer in the future. There are moments when music summons forth all the sadness woven into the woof ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... They try to skim through by doing just as little work as possible. They cut the corners as closely as possible with their lessons, so that they can have time for play. They do that with the work in subtraction, and ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley

... my boat is moored for thee, By ocean's weedy floor— The petrel does not skim the sea More swiftly than my oar. We'll go, where, on the rocky isles, Her eggs the screaming sea-fowl ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... the sea long lines of pelicans pursue a lumbering flight; graceful terns (sea-swallows) skim the waves; a great blue heron stalks across the hard sand, majestic, solitary and shy of man's approach; and dainty little beach-birds, piping plover in snowy white and drab, glide rapidly past the surf-line. A mile below Beach Avenue is a high sandhill shelving abruptly toward the beach, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... required by the healthy body, and intemperance is a fruitful predisposing cause of consumption. Skim milk is not a suitable food for ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk



Words linked to "Skim" :   see, natural covering, read, remove, coat, throw, fat-free, surface, touch, covering, examine, withdraw, glide, reading, take away, take, aquaplane, cover, fatless, nonfat



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