skirmish
pronunciation
How to pronounce skirmish in British English:
UK [ˈskɜ:mɪʃ]
How to pronounce skirmish in American English:
US [ˈskɜrmɪʃ]
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- Noun:
- a minor short-term fight
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- Verb:
- engage in a skirmish
Word Origin
- skirmish
- skirmish: [14] English adapted skirmish from eskermiss-, the present stem of Old French eskermir ‘fight with a sword’. This in turn went back to a Frankish *skirmjan, a relative of modern German schirmen. A variant of skirmish arose with the i and r sounds reversed, giving scrimish, which is the source of modern English scrimmage [15] and also of scrummage [19] and its abbreviation scrum [19].=> scrimmage, scrummage
- skirmish (n.)
- late 14c., from Old French escarmouche "skirmish," from Italian scaramuccia, earlier schermugio, probably from a Germanic source (compare Old High German skirmen "to protect, defend"), with a diminutive or depreciatory suffix, from Proto-Germanic *skerm-, from PIE *(s)ker- (1) "to cut" (see shear (v.)). Influenced in Middle English by a separate verb skirmysshen "to brandish a weapon," from Old French eskirmiss-, stem of eskirmir "to fence," from Frankish *skirmjan, from the same Germanic source. Compare scrimmage. Other modern Germanic forms have an additional diminutive affix: German scharmützel, Dutch schermutseling, Danish skjærmydsel. Skirmish-line attested by 1864.
- skirmish (v.)
- c. 1200, from Old French escarmouchier, from Italian scaramucciare (see skirmish (n.)). Related: Skirmished; skirmishing.
Example
- 1. The man above was killed in a skirmish in december 2010 for an unknown reason .
- 2. Snarling between the koreas , meanwhile , seems a more urgent global skirmish than any between the g2 .
- 3. Our skirmish went on for 20 minutes ; finally an infantry platoon came up behind us and chased the north koreans into the valley .
- 4. A c. o. in the guard tower takes notice and fires warning shots into the yard around michael and abruzzi , ending the skirmish .
- 5. The shipment to hizbullah of a balance-tipping new weapon , a skirmish on the lebanese or increasingly volatile gaza border-any number of miscalculations could ignite a conflagration .