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Glite Dictionary
👗 A women's clothing 🚺 A woman (offensive) 🙈 To avoid directly ↩️ To go around 🍄 A mushroom ring
to skirt

to skirt

16 4.4
To move along the edge of something
  • verb
  • /skɜrt/
translation icon : bordear
  • To avoid traffic, you should skirt the downtown area during rush hour.
  • highway skirts

So, so that's how they skirt the wall there.

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Examples

  • Mud splattered on their legs as they ran, barely skirting the edges of murky pools covered with fine duckweed.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • We just skirt right around Roscoe and head straight on out to Enid.

    Honkytonk Man (1982)

  • We'll skirt the edge of it.

    In the Heart of the Sea (2015)

  • We'll skirt the storm this way.

    Switchback (1997)

  • It'll take two weeks to skirt the wall of mountains.

    Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

  • From there, we skirt the coast of Algeria and cross the Mediterranean into Spain.

    Academic text (2008)

  • We'd have to skirt the no-fly zone.

    Flight of Fury (2007)

  • The abandoned mining road skirted the town and then petered out for the path.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • A path led from this point, skirted the lakeside of the mill, and continued to the swinging bridge.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • So anxious was he to return to Rafsanjan that he skirted towns and took shortcuts.

    Fiction book (1994)

Antonyms

to cross
∞ 1.0

To go across something from one side to the other

Idioms

to chase skirt
  • Offensive
9.9

Try to have romantic or sexual relationships with many women, often not seriously

Phrasal Verbs

to skirt around the issue
1 6.8

To avoid talking about a difficult subject by giving vague answers

Compounds

grass skirt
4 4.2

A piece of clothing made from long grass worn for Pacific Island dances

full skirt
2 2.6

A long, wide skirt gathered at the waist that spreads out

skirt chaser
  • Offensive
1 9.0

A man who often tries to attract many women in a showy way

ballet skirt
1 3.2

A very short, lightweight piece of clothing worn by ballerinas

gathered skirt
3.5

A skirt with fabric pulled together at the waist to make it full

hobble skirt
  • Archaic
9.9

A long narrow skirt that fits tightly at the ankles and makes walking hard

skirt of tasses
  • Archaic
9.9

A row of metal plates that hang below the waist to protect the hips and thighs

How Close

to outline
65 3.2
to skirt
16 4.4
to pass by
165 1.2

Surface Forms

skirt infinitive
skirted past
skirted past participle
skirting present participle
skirts third person singular

Etymology

The verb skirt meaning to go around comes from the idea of moving along the 'edge' where a skirt hangs. So when you skirt a place or object you move around its border instead of going through it.