skelp

verb

1. (Northern-England, Scotland, transitive)To beat or slap with the hand.

   “But Mistress Munro would up and be at the door and in she'd yank Andy by the lug, and some said she'd take down his breeks and skelp him, but maybe that was a lie.”

   “My stomach was just sore and I was rubbing it. But he just reached and skelped me on the leg and I fell down and he waited for me to get up and he skelped me on the b*m.”

2. (Northern-England, Scotland, transitive)To beat, pound or hammer.

   “... hither blith comes tinker John, Who skelps the kettle, and sweet tunes the drone, […]”

   “"Fa' in! fa' in!" he's yelpin : The fifes are whuslin' loud and clear, An ' sair the drums they're skelpin'.”

   “... sewing, hammering, and "skelping away at the leather."”

3. (Scotland)To drive by blows; to drive (hard), to cause to move rapidly.

   “My fair opponents skelp me aff,[…]”

   “We'll skelp him to hell, / where his frien's will him crown,[…]”

   “A byke was regarded as a glorious capture, not only for the sake of the honey, but because of the fun the boys had in skelpin' out the bees.”

4. (Ireland, Northern-England, Scotland, intransitive)To move briskly along; to run.

   “[…] the lassie became extremely wild, ran like a hare, and […] skelped home in a crack, on the "light side of her foot," to Barniewater.”

   “... that little plaguy breed / That skelp aboot in youngster's hair.”

   “... up cam my young Lord Evandale, skelping as fast as his horse could trot, and twenty red-coats at his back.”

   “... I saw Pat skelping along without a cap or a hat on his sun-burnt hair. 'What's the hurry, Pat?' says I. 'I'm going to see the execution,' says he.”

   “[…] sha […] com skelpin yam, as thof summat had bont her, Or thoosans o' rattens an mice was behont her. Lawk! hoo sha did[…]”

5. (intransitive)To rain heavily; (of rain) to fall.

   “... more than halfway to the summit / A rain squall down on them did plummet, / Skelping down harder by the minute / We'll wait […]”

   “"Lord Harry only knows what sort of storm is skelping down." They two knew what sort of storm it was, when they reached the long pasture that raked up into the Logie highroad. The wind came, and the snow, and biting hail - came ravening on the track of the wild-geese[…]”

6. (transitive)To form (a plate or bar of metal, etc.) into a skelp.
7. (transitive)To bend round (a skelp) in tube-making.

noun

1. A blow; a smart stroke, especially with the hand; a smack.

   “They came crack down on their bottoms with a loud skelp on the seats.”

   “A skelp on the lug is not a very deadly assault. It is neither a stroke nor a blow.”

2. (Scotland)A squall; a heavy fall of rain.
3. (Scotland)A large portion.

   “Great skelps of riotous colors followed each other across the window-framed screen, pounding upon bleak northern hearts as the surf pounds upon a rocky headland.”

   “... great skelps of centuries together until they're almost in the same skin, growing into each other, shrinking to each other's sizes and shapes, speaking with one voice, clinging fast together, dying days or hours apart.”

4. A narrow strip of rolled or forged metal, ready to be bent and welded to form a pipe.

   “[…] he then heats one half of the skelp at a time in an air furnace, or other fire, and having so heated it, he passes the skelp between a pair of grooved rollers placed at the mouth of the furnace, for the purpose of uniting (or marrying, as he terms it) the edges of the metal ; that is, causing the edges of the open part of the skelp to be pressed together, and made to adhere and form a complete cylinder.”