SKID • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Skid

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/skɪd/ Listen

noun

Skid n. (Written also skeed)

1.

A shoe or clog, as of iron, attached to a chain, and placed under the wheel of a wagon to prevent its turning when descending a steep hill; a drag; a skidpan; also, by extension, a hook attached to a chain, and used for the same purpose.

2.

A piece of timber used as a support, or to receive pressure. Specifically:

(a)

pl. (Naut.) Large fenders hung over a vessel's side to protect it in handling a cargo.

(b)

One of a pair of timbers or bars, usually arranged so as to form an inclined plane, as form a wagon to a door, along which anything is moved by sliding or rolling.

(c)

One of a pair of horizontal rails or timbers for supporting anything, as a boat, a barrel, etc.

3.

(Aeronautics) A runner (one or two) under some flying machines, used for landing.

4.

A low movable platform for supporting heavy items to be transported, typically of two layers, and having a space between the layers into which the fork of a fork lift can be inserted; it is used to conveniently transport heavy objects by means of a fork lift; a skid without wheels is the same as a pallet.

5.

pl. Declining fortunes; a movement toward defeat or downfall; used mostly in the phrase on the skids and hit the skids.

6.

Act of skidding; called also side slip.

verb

Skid v. t. (past & past part. skidded; pres. part. skidding)

1.

To protect or support with a skid or skids; also, to cause to move on skids.

2.

To check with a skid, as wagon wheels.

3.

(Forestry) To haul (logs) to a skid and load on a skidway.

Skid v. i.

1.

To slide without rotating; said of a wheel held from turning while the vehicle moves onward.

2.

To fail to grip the roadway; specif., to slip sideways on the road; to side-slip; said esp. of a cycle or automobile.

See images of 'Skid'

Etymology of 'Skid'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Skid" Quotes from Famous Books

... 'glitschig' to slip, via Yiddish 'glitshen', to slide or skid] 1. /n./ A sudden interruption in electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function. Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is specifically called a 'power glitch' (also {power hit}), of grave concern because it usually crashes all the computers. ...

— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... was casting about for an eating-house when I heard the purr of a motor-cycle and across the road saw the intelligent boy scout. He saw me, too, and put on the brake with a sharpness which caused him to skid and all but come to grief under the wheels of a wool-wagon. That gave me time to efface myself by darting up a side street. I had an unpleasant sense that I was about to be trapped, for in a place I knew nothing of I had not a chance to use ...

— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... England and France foster, and in which America is woefully lax, is the indoor game. Unfortunately the majority of the courts abroad have wood surfaces, true but lightning fast. The perfect indoor court should retain its true bound, but slow up the skid of the ball. The most successful surface I have ever played upon is battleship linoleum—the heavy covering used on men-of-war. This gives a true, slightly retarded bound, not unlike ...

— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... the wall that served as an entrance for the visitors to the ruins. It opened on a sunk road running between the park wall and a copsewood containing some abandoned quarries. M. Filleul stooped forward: the dust of the road bore marks of anti-skid pneumatic tires. Raymonde and Victor remembered that, after the shot, they had seemed to hear the throb of ...

— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... world. If the sea were drained off, you might drive a waggon all the way from Valentia, on the west coast of Ireland, to Trinity Bay, in Newfoundland. And, except upon one sharp incline about 200 miles from Valentia, I am not quite sure that it would even be necessary to put the skid on, so gentle are the ascents and descents upon that long route. From Valentia the road would lie down-hill for about 200 miles to the point at which the bottom is now covered by 1,700 fathoms of sea-water. Then would come the central plain, more than a thousand miles wide, ...

— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

Copyright © 2025 Free Translator.org