''skipper'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''skipper'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔

skipper - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

skipper (plural skippers)

• (nautical) The master of a ship.
  • ✤ Synonyms: master, captain
  • ✤ The skipper Mr. Cooke had hired at Far Harbor was a God-fearing man with a luke warm interest in his new billet and employer, and had only been prevailed upon to take charge of the yacht after the offer of an emolument equal to half a year’s sea pay of an ensign in the navy.¹
  • ✤ It is standard practice for search and rescue authorities to ask other vessels in the area to assist. Usually, this is done. The weather on the night of 31 December was too atrocious, and when at 11pm the Coast Guard asked the crabber Ruff & Reddy to head to the scene, its skipper refused, as a skipper has a right to do if he believes conditions to be too treacherous.²
• A coach, director, or other leader.
• (sports) The captain of a sports team such as football, cricket, rugby or curling.
  • ✤ But even the return of skipper Steven Gerrard from a six-week injury layoff could not inspire Liverpool³

Verb

skipper (third-person singular simple present skippers, present participle skippering, simple past and past participle skippered)

• (transitive) To captain a ship or a sports team.
  • ✤ Tourist subs, which could once be skippered by anyone with a U.S. Coast Guard captain’s license⁴

Noun

skipper (plural skippers)

• Agent noun of skip: one who skips.
• A person who skips, or fails to attend class.
• (sports) One who jumps rope.
• Any of various butterflies of the families Hesperiidae and its subfamily Megathyminae, having a hairy mothlike body, hooked tips on the antennae, and a darting flight pattern.⁵
  • ✤ Blue skippers in sunny hours ope and shut
    Where wormwood and grunsel flowers by the cart ruts […]⁶
• Any of several marine fishes that often leap above water, especially Cololabis saira (Pacific saury) and Sprattus sprattus (European sprat).
• (obsolete) A young, thoughtless person.⁵
  • ✤ * Skipper, stand back; ‘tis age that nourisheth*⁷
• The cheese maggot, the larva of a cheese fly (family Piophilidae), which leaps to escape predators.⁵

Noun

skipper (plural skippers)

• A barn or shed in which to shelter for the night.

Verb

skipper (third-person singular simple present skippers, present participle skippering, simple past and past participle skippered)

• (intransitive) To take shelter in a barn or shed.

Noun

skipper (plural skippers)

• (South Africa) A short-sleeved (or long-sleeved) tee-shirt, or sweatshirt.
  • ✤ Synonyms: jumper, tee-shirt
  • ✤ Plain nylon doeks…Men’s knitted skippers, long sleeves, three buttons in front.⁸
  • ✤ The special constables..were issued with one pair of boots, two overalls, one raincoat, and two skippers — but no shirts or warm coats.⁹
  • ✤ My neighbour’s little boy pestered his dad for a ‘Viva’ T-shirt. This long-suffering man pointed out to his son that he had been sharing his w:Cosatu skipper with him.., but the kid..did not want to wear it any longer as it was not, as he put it, ‘skipa sa Mandela’.¹⁰

Pronunciation

• (non-rhotic)
  • (Received Pronunciation, Australian, General South African) IPA: /ˈskɪp.ə/, [ˈskɪp.ə]
  • (New Zealand) IPA: /ˈskɘp.ɘ/, [ˈskɘp.ɘ]
• (rhotic)
  • (General American, Standard Canadian) IPA: /ˈskɪp.ɚ/, [ˈskɪp.ɚ] ~ [ˈskɪp.ɹ̩]
    • Audio (US): 🔊
• Rhymes: -ɪpə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: skip‧per

Etymology 1

From Middle English skippere, skyppere, scippere, borrowed from Middle Dutch scipper, schipper, from Old Dutch ﹡skipāri, from Proto-Germanic ﹡skipārijaz. Piecewise doublet of shipper, from ship +‎ -er.

Etymology 2

From Middle English skippere, skyppare, equivalent to skip +‎ -er.

Etymology 3

Probably from Welsh ysgubor (“a barn”).

Etymology 4

Unknown, perhaps related to jumper.¹¹

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter X, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC: ↩

2. 2025 October 21, Rose George, “‘I knew in my head we were dying’: the last voyage of the Scandies Rose”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[2]}$: ↩

3. 2010 December 29, Sam Sheringham, “Liverpool 0-1 Wolverhampton”, in BBC Sport ‎${}^{[3]}$: ↩

4. 2019, Tony Perrottet, “A Deep Dive Into the Plans to Take Tourists to the ‘Titanic’”, in Smithsonian Magazine: ↩

5. “skipper”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC. ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. c. 1864, John Clare, We passed by green closes: ↩

7. c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]: ↩

8. 1971 June 26, Golden City Post: ↩

9. 1987 August 19, Eastern Province Herald: ↩

10. 1990 May 26, O. Musi, Drum Magazine: ↩

11. Dictionary of South African English ‎${}^{[1]}$, ↩

Link to original

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