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Skim   /skɪm/   Listen
Skim

noun
1.
A thin layer covering the surface of a liquid.
2.
Reading or glancing through quickly.  Synonym: skimming.



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"Skim" Quotes from Famous Books



... tosses the swallows over the hollows and down on the shallows till every feather doth shake and quiver and all their feathers go all together blowing the life and the joy so rife into the swallows that skim the shallows and have the yellowest children for the wind that blows is the life of the river flowing for ever that washes the grasses still as it passes and feeds the daisies the little white praises and buttercups bonny so golden and sunny with butter and honey that whiten the sheep ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald

... the corner and screamed her sister's name at the open window, without getting an answer; but as she was rushing, distracted, round the house, Giselle came out of the door, and darted past her, running silently, her hair loose, and her eyes staring straight ahead. She seemed to skim along the grass as if ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... that insatiable gunner came on them there it was easy to run low among the hemlock to the great pine, then rise with a derisive whirr behind its bulk, and keeping the huge trunk in line with the deadly gun, skim off in safety. A dozen times at least the pine had saved them during the lawful murder season, and here it was that Cuddy, knowing their feeding habits, laid a new trap. Under the bank he sneaked and watched in ambush while an accomplice went around the Sugar Loaf to drive the birds. ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... three pieces there will come a messenger, to bid him to the King, so he will lay my flesh in a cauldron of brass and set it upon a brasier before going to the presence and he will say to thee, 'Keep up the fire under the cauldron till the scum rise; then skim it off and pour it into a phial to cool. Wait till it cool and then drink it, so shall naught of malady or pain be left in all thy body. When the second scum riseth, skim it off and pour it into a phial against my return from the King, that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... mud which stuck to our boots by the pound, peering through bitter cold mist which seemed but a thinner skim of mud, drenched by flurries of icy drops shaken from the atmosphere by a passing moan and a crash, breathing air heavy with a sweet, horrible, penetrating odor—such was the world as it existed for an hour one night, while I and the Commandant of Douaumont wandered about completely ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... the golden butterflies skim over, And poise, all fondly, on these lifted lips, Leaving the riches of the sweet red clover For the blue gentians' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... men, so, in order to make existence possible, their wives went out charing or worked in laundries. They had children whom they had to bring up for the most part on 'skim' milk, bread, margarine, and adulterated tea. Many of these children—little mites of eight or nine years—went to work for two or three hours in the morning before going to school; the same in the evening after school, and all day on Saturday, carrying ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... live amidst the coral bowers and crystal caverns of the ocean, with my sister nymphs, and listen to the sounding waters above, and to the soft shells of the tritons! and then, after sun-set, to skim on the surface of the waves round wild rocks and along sequestered shores, where, perhaps, some pensive wanderer comes to weep! Then would I soothe his sorrows with my sweet music, and offer him from a shell some of the delicious fruit ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... gold, crimsoned here and there by the rays of the setting sun, and here and there melting off into a kind of burning silver. A glorious breeze is beginning to curl the face of the waters, and to swell the white sails of the skiffs and light vessels that skim the tide like birds of the air, apparently instinct with life and gladness. It rustles through the foliage, the bright, green foliage, that contrasts so dazzlingly with the smooth, white, sandy beach,—it lifts the soft, silky locks of that beautiful infant, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... to my presence of mind, as a beginning. I felt the words of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or line by line, but by the entire page; I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed, if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me with a smoothness ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... wither'd hags Tell how wi' you on ragweed nags [ragwort] They skim the muirs an' dizzy crags Wi' wicked speed; And in kirk-yards renew their leagues ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... it as can a grown-up person, and so all the children of the family are represented in the picture as hard at work, enameling whatever few articles of furniture and household use the grasping selfishness of their elders has spared to them. One is painting the toasting fork in a "skim-milk blue," while another is giving aesthetical value to the Dutch oven by means of a new shade of art green. The bootjack is being renovated in "old gold," and the baby is sitting on the floor, smothering its own cradle ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome

... from that date, after sending sundry presents on his part to the family, of smeaked hams and salt tongues—acknowledged on theirs, by return of carrier, in the shape of sucking pigs, jargonelle pears, skim-milk cheeses, and such like—matters were soldered; and Miss Jeanie Learig, made into Mrs Whitteraick by the blessing of Dr Blether, rode away into Edinburgh in a post-chaise, with a brown and a black horse, one blind and the other lame, seated cheek-by-jowl with her ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... servants employed for the purpose, and start upon the return journey, and so ad infinitum. One learns how to do it after a bit, and I suppose there is no more delicious sensation on earth than that rush down and skim along the level—when once you have learned the art; but, my goodness! one's feelings at ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... the Willow's copse they scale, The Fir's dark pyramid, or Poplar pale, Scoop from the Aider's leaf its oozy flood, Or strip the Chestnut's resin-coated bud, Skim the light tear that tips Narcissus' ray, Or round the Hollyhock's hoar fragrance play. Soon temper'd to their will through eve's low beam, And link'd in airy bands the viscous stream, They waft their nut-brown loads exulting home, That form a fret-work for the future comb; Caulk every ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... many deep things in the words, which I cannot touch in the course of a single sermon; but I wish now, at all events, to skim their surface, and try to gather some of their ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... forsake us; but the old book is ever the same. What would the old man do without it? And to you who are young I would say—you may re-read, you first must read. Choose worthy books to love. As for those who know no book long enough either to love or despise it—who skim through good and bad alike and forget page ninety-nine while reading page 100, we may simply say to them, in the words of the witty Frenchman, "What a sad old age you ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... five or six. In this forest of tiny palms the nests were hanging, attached to the boles, where two or three grew close together; it was a long and deep nest, skilfully made of dry sedge leaves woven together, and the eggs were white or skim-milk blue spotted with black at ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... down for pastry and frying, and only makes the stock greasy; always cover the bones with cold water, but regulate the quantity by the material used. Put in cold water with a teaspoonful of salt, and when it boils up, skim well; when skimming, take an iron spoon and a basin of water, and dip the spoon in the water each time the scum is removed; then put in the peppercorns and vegetables. In very hot weather put peppercorns and a fagot of herbs only, as the vegetables cause the stock to turn sour very soon; ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter through the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... down: the lower rail fits rather tightly and some exertion is required to free it, so he makes the animals jump that one. Then he "poddies"-hand-feeds—the calves which have been weaned too early. He carries the skim-milk to the yard in a bucket made out of an oil-drum—sometimes a kerosene-tin—seizes a calf by the nape of the neck with his left hand, inserts the dirty forefinger of his right into its mouth, and shoves its head down into the milk. The calf sucks, thinking it has a teat, ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... bad as yourself," said I. "There is no skim-milk in Francis Burke. But which is it to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... over the fire on a low hearth; various figures appear in the vapour rising from it. A FEMALE MONKEY sits beside the caldron to skim it, and watch that it does not boil over. The MALE MONKEY with the young ones is seated near, warming himself. The walls and ceiling are adorned with the strangest ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... rather take it thou hast got By instinct wise much sense about thy lot, And hast small care Whether an Eden or a desert be Thy home, so thou remain'st alive, and free To skim the air. ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... in the nest on the high bright tree Blazing with dawn and dew, She knoweth the gleam of the world and the glee As I drop like a bolt from the blue; She knoweth the fire of the level flight As I skim, close, close to the ground, With the long grass lashing my breast and the bright Dew-drops flashing around. She watcheth the hawk, the hawk, the hawk, (O, the red-blotched eggs in the nest!) Watcheth him sway in the sun's bright ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... old b——h might look out for another cully; that he would not be fooled so by ever a country mock modesty in England; that he supposed I had left my maidenhead with some hobnail in the country, and was come to dispose of my skim-milk in town" with a volley of the like abuse; which I listened to with more pleasure than ever fond woman did to protestations of love from her darling minion: for, incapable as I was of receiving any addition to my perfect hatred and ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... Pond was not used as much as the river for skating; but this winter the ice was as smooth and solid as if it had been frozen artificially, so the High School boys and girls could not resist the temptation to skim over ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower

... bar waiting for Rumway and his associates to come off and show them the entrance between the sand-spits. And nearer, all about on the surface of the sparkling river, snowy sails were glancing in the sun, like the wings of birds that skim beside them. It is hard, in July, to believe it has ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... down-stairs with our clean collars on, Willie never went near Myra again that night. After all, he seemed to be a diluted kind of a skim-milk sort of a chap, and I never wondered that Joe ...
— Options • O. Henry

... she said to herself, 'nothing could be pleasanter,' and she was almost sorry when her skim across the sea of glass was over, and she found herself at the foot of ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth

... from Taenarus came Euphemus whom, most swift-footed of men, Europe, daughter of mighty Tityos, bare to Poseidon. He was wont to skim the swell of the grey sea, and wetted not his swift feet, but just dipping the tips of his toes was ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... each! What a rushing sound their wings make! They fly too high for us just now: but wait till we get on the cleared hill yonder to the right of the sugar-bush, and we shall have rare sport as they emerge from the trees and skim along ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... who live in town have to keep a sharp lookout or we are apt to share the fate of many a valuable Buff Cochin or Plymouth Rock. Trains speed along their glistening rails faster than ever before. Great ships skim across the ocean in days instead of weeks. The aeroplane, which needs neither steel rails nor water to glide upon, darts through space still more rapidly. Everybody seems to be in a hurry, whether he is or not. We are impatient if the street car is half a minute late, when we are fully ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... exclaimed Mr. Sponge, who, having watched them till they began to skim in their flight, saw them stop, flap their wings, and drop among some straggling gorse on the hill before them. 'Let's break the covey; we ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... out to his companions a characteristic of the hawk and buzzard tribe, by which these birds can always be distinguished from the true falcon. That peculiarity lay in the manner of seizing their prey. The former skim forward upon it sideways—that is, in a horizontal or diagonal direction, and pick it up in passing; while the true falcons—as the merlin, the peregrine, the gerfalcon, and the great eagle-falcons—shoot down ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... and never can know. The most fragmentary and inadequate grasp of them with heart and mind will bring light to the mind and quietness and peace to the heart; but the whole meaning of them goes beyond men and angels. We can only skim the surface and seek to shift back the boundaries of our knowledge a little further, and to embrace within its limits a little more of the broad land into which the words bring us. So just take a thought or two which may tend ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... the froth that the fluid grows thicker You, should skim it (with glee) for it's turning to liquor! While it ferments, please continue to skim: At the end, you may murmur the Bartender's Hymn. This makes a booze that is potent enough— Seal in a hogshead—and hide it ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... scalded with hot water and peppered all over with shot. I'll teach you how to get a living without being a house-cat. I hate houses and the people who live in them, and I do them all the mischief I can. I eat up their chickens and I suck their eggs. I climb in at the pantry window and skim their milk. Once when the cook left the kitchen door open I snatched the beefsteak from the gridiron and made off with the family dinner. They hate me—they do. They've tried to kill me a dozen times; but I'm Robber Grim, ha! ha! and ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... guarded it like a sacred animal but to no purpose. He drank of its milk and grew thinner than ever. Strange furrows began to appear on his tiny face, with shadows and a transparent tinge like the blue of skim-milk. As the pure air of Drayton did so little for him, Mrs. Nevill Tyson wondered how he would bear the ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... watch the race. When Piggy vaulted the back-yard fence into Miss Morgan's garden, he heard the pursuers half a block away. He saw, a hundred feet distant, a bevy of girls standing on the sidewalk. And he saw, too, as he came skipping down the lot, something that made him fairly skim over the earth; his Heart's Desire, standing alone, near the porch, in his path, under an apple-tree. The exhilaration of the chase had made him forget his trouble. He was so surefooted in the race that he forgot to be abashed for the moment and ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White

... believe this would do for little Pete;" and the dear old lady drew a large, pressed-tin pan off the top shelf in the pantry. A long, smooth butter-tray was found for Jimmy. Grandma shook her cap-border with laughter to see them skim over the hard crust in their queer sleds. And the boys shouted and swung their hands as they flew ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various

... Who killed him?" Racey allowed his eyes casually to skim the expressionless faces of the men ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... stretched out in quietude on either hand, with sunlight filtering between its deep bands of trees. At that hour the rays only illumined one side of the avenue, there gilding the lofty drapery of verdure; on the other, the shady side, the greenery seemed almost black. It was truly delightful to skim, swallow-like, over that royal avenue in the fresh atmosphere, amidst the waving of grass and foliage, whose powerful scent swept against one's face. Pierre and Marie scarcely touched the soil: it was as if ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... fat salt pork cut in dice in it. When fried, put the potatoes in. Season with a bunch of seasonings composed of two sprigs of parsley, one of thyme, and a bay-leaf; salt and pepper to taste, and about half a pint of broth or water. Boil gently till cooked, remove the bunch of seasonings; skim off the fat, if any, and serve warm. It is served at breakfast, as well ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot

... for further agricultural production, will automatically be delivered to the co-operative business centre of the district, where the manager of the dairy will turn the milk into butter or cheese, and the skim milk will be returned to feed the community's pigs. The poultry and egg department will pack and dispatch the fowl and eggs to market. The mill will grind the corn and return it ground to the member, or there may be a co-operative bakery to which some of it may ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell

... by sapphire seas, Fanned by breezes salt and cool, Stood the Master with his school. Over sails that not in vain Wooed the west-wind's steady strain, Line of coast that low and far Stretched its undulating bar, Wings aslant along the rim Of the waves they stooped to skim, Rock and isle and glistening bay, Fell the beautiful ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... disconcerting enough in their degree, were to the signboard, when the signboard at last came, as skim milk is to hot brandy. It was the signboard that, more startlingly than anything else, marked the dawn of a new era in St. Luke's Square. Four men spent a day and a half in fixing it; they had ladders, ropes, and pulleys, and two ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... Then came the fatal Wednesday—the 'd.w.t.' day as we call it—for Granville always saves up his rejected addresses for us to 'decline with thanks' for Wednesdays. There was a good batch of them this day, so Waterford and I took half each. I took a hurried skim through mine, but no 'Ancient and Modern Athletic Sports' were there. I concluded therefore Waterford had it. Granville writes in the corner of each 'd.w.t.,' or 'd.w.t. note,' which means 'declined with thanks' pure and simple, or 'declined with thanks' and a short polite note to be written ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... beef add six quarts of cold water and place over the fire. Just before it boils, skim it carefully. Then add two cups of cold water and skim again, repeating this for a third skimming. Allow it to simmer slowly for three hours. Then add the vegetables; eight ounces each of cut up carrots, onions and turnips, and three ounces of celery, with salt and pepper. ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden

... little chance when we get to the end of the island, don't you see?" Thad bawled, making use of one hand to serve in lieu of a speaking trumpet. "We're getting closer all the time, and will just skim past the last rock. And then is our chance, when we strike the eddy there always is beyond an ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... vampires, bats and goat-suckers dart from their lonely retreat and skim along the trees on the river's bank. The different kinds of frogs almost stun the ear with their hoarse and hollow-sounding croaking, while the owls and goat-suckers lament ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... wings are so short and weak that flight in the air is denied it. Still it uses them effectually in flapping, which, aided by the beating of its broad webbed feet, upon stout legs set far back on the body, enables it to skim over the surface of the water at the rate of fifteen miles an hour! In its progress, says Darwin, "it makes such a noise and splashing that the effect is exceedingly curious." The great naturalist further ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... prized for its soundness, which is referable to muriatic acid being used in curdling the milk instead of rennet. This renders it pungent, and preserves it from mites. Parmesan cheese, so called from Parma in Italy, where it is manufactured, and highly prized, is merely a skim-milk cheese, which owes its rich flavour to the fine herbage of the meadows along the Po, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various

... botany A hundred wonders shall diskiver, We'll flog and troll in strid and hole, And skim the cream of lake and river, Blow Snowdon! give me Ireland for my pennies, Hurrah! for salmon, grilse, and—Dennis, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley

... pour of forenoon sunshine on the white dust of the street before our hotel, but the cold of the early morning, though it had not been too much for the birds that sang in the garden back of us, had left a skim of ice in damp spots, and now, in the late gray of the afternoon, the ice was visible and palpable underfoot in the Colosseum, where crowds of people wandered severally or collectively about in the half-frozen mud. They were, indeed, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... for his beautiful young bride, and the mother from her quiet farm-nook sends her petition to New York. She can not manage the "infare" unless Susan comes home and helps. So she drops the affairs of government long enough to skim across the State and lend a hand in preparing for this interesting event, and then back again to her incessant drudgery, made doubly ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... you have lived in the world," she said; after a pause, "you are a man and wise; and I am but a child. Forgive me, if I seem to teach, who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain; but those who learn much do but skim the face of knowledge; they seize the laws, they conceive the dignity of the design—the horror of the living fact fades from their memory. It is we who sit at home with evil who remember, I think, and are warned and pity. Go, rather, go now, and keep ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... required by the healthy body, and intemperance is a fruitful predisposing cause of consumption. Skim milk is not a suitable food for the young. ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... seemed to have a dog farm, as the place was overrun with the animals. We needed some corn for the horses, and asked him if he had any to sell. He was a queer looking man, with hair the color of molasses candy, and skim-milk eyes. ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth

... might-have-beens and his hopeless dull miseries where he had left them off. Two or three hours later his wife got wearily up and was going away to bed without a good-night—custom now—but she stopped near the letter and eyed it awhile with a dead interest, then broke it open, and began to skim it over. Richards, sitting there with his chair tilted back against the wall and his chin between his knees, heard something fall. It was his wife. He sprang to her side, but she ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain

... took her almost two hours each way. She said the kind of costume she required should have been corrugated steel. But all three knew what was being worn, and they wore it—or fairly faithful copies of it. Eva, the housekeeping sister, had a needle knack. She could skim the State Street windows and come away with a mental photograph of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads of departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and she went home and reproduced them with the aid of a seamstress by the ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... philanthropist, and typical American, came from fine, rugged Scotch stock. He was the son of a well-to-do Scottish woolen-mill owner in Allegheny, Pa., where he was born, July 11, 1839. He often said he was raised on skim milk. He received a common school education in Pittsburgh and Allegheny. He and Henry Phipps, the coke and steel head, are said to have occupied adjoining desks in one of the public schools, Andrew Carnegie being at that time in another grade of the same school. He ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... Can Cream Separator, about 1890. USNM 129789; 1934. Cooley brand creamer, used for separating milk from cream prior to churning. The milk and cream were set in a cool place for several hours while the cream rose to the top. The farmer drew skim milk off through a spigot at the bottom, after which the cream could be drawn off. Used on farms before the hand centrifugal separator came into wide use. By 1890, in butter-producing areas, the centrifugal separator had already caused the disuse of the Cooley and similar ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker

... but appear to follow the gale, and when it blows most heavily they are seen in greatest numbers. The colour is brown and white; the size about that of the swallow, whose motions oh the wing they resemble. They skim over the surface of the roughest sea, gliding up and down the undulations with astonishing swiftness. When they observe their prey, they descend flutteringly, and place the feet and the tips of the wings on the surface of the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... sense in keeping this deck watch. Only a short distance away lay the United States gunboat "Waverly," with her alert marine guard. Though there was no moon, the starlight was bright enough to enable a marine on the gunboat to see anything that might skim over the water ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... to another—and when burnt out they are placed in the fields as charms against blight.[13] The large ragwort—known in Ireland as the "fairies' horse"—has long been sought for by witches when taking their midnight journeys. Burns, in his "Address to the Deil," makes his witches "skim the muirs and dizzy crags" on "rag-bred nags" with "wicked speed." The same legendary belief prevails in Cornwall, in connection with the Castle Peak, a high rock to the south of the Logan stone. Here, writes Mr. Hunt,[14] "many a man, and woman too, now quietly ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme, parsley and marjoram. Put the lid on the stewpan and braize well for fifteen minutes, then stir in a tablespoonful of flour, and pour in a quarter pint of good boiling stock and boil very gently for fifteen minutes, then strain through a tamis, skim off all the grease, pour the sauce into an earthenware vessel, and let it get cold. If it is not rich enough, add a little Liebig or glaze. Pass through a ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters

... of brine strong enough to float an egg; add two pounds of brown sugar or a quart of molasses, and four ounces of saltpetre; boil and skim clean, and pour cold on your meat. Meat intended for smoking should remain in pickle about four weeks. This pickle can be boiled over, and with a fresh cup of sugar and salt used all summer. Some persons use as much soda as saltpetre. It will correct acidity, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... quite a pleasant little excursion from Gurgan Point to the harbour; the sea was luckily calm, but there was sufficient breeze to enable The Kittiwake to skim over the water like her sea-gull namesake. The girls, who by this time had grasped the depths of their friend's plot, enjoyed the situation immensely. They were actually having their coveted sail in the very company of the dear lady who had so expressly forbidden the jaunt, and all without the slightest ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... headquarters. The mills of the police gods, which grind not so slowly but ofttimes exceeding fine, were about done with their grinding; and as the last of the grist came through the hopper, the last of the afternoon sunlight came sifting in through the windows at the west, thin and pale as skim milk. One after another the culprits, patrolmen mainly, had been arraigned on charges preferred by a superior officer, who was usually a lieutenant or a captain, but once in a while an inspector, full-breasted and gold-banded, like a fat blue bumblebee. In due turn each offender ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... through the streets, and jolted over the stones, and at length reach the wide and open country. The wheels skim over the hard and frosty ground; and the horses, bursting into a canter at a smart crack of the whip, step along the road as if the load behind them—coach, passengers, cod-fish, oyster-barrels, and all—were but a feather ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... 'a poet laid a table for men to eat and drink at. We'd Sir Walter's beef and bannocks, and puir young Byron's Athol brose. Wha calls this mingling o' skim milk an' treacle the wine o' the soul a poet ought ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... with bound after bound, flying over the fallen logs, pausing neither for brook nor ravine. The baying of the hounds grew fainter behind her. But she struck a bad piece of going, a dead-wood slash. It was marvellous to see her skim over it, leaping among its intricacies, and not breaking her slender legs. No other living animal could do it. But it was killing work. She began to pant fearfully; she lost ground. The baying of the hounds was nearer. She climbed the hard-wood hill at a slower gait: but, once on more ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... answers. They must also know how to use books to answer their own questions. This means they must know how to turn from part to part, gleaning here or there what they need. It means training in the ability to skim, omitting unessentials and picking out essentials. It means the ability to recognize major points, minor points, and illustrative material. Children must be taught to use the table of contents, the index, and paragraph headings. They must, in their search for fuller information or ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... haste, as is the way Of monkish men. The beauty of Lucrezia Commends, not discommends, her to the eyes Of keener thinkers than I take thee for. I am an artist and an engineer, Giv'n o'er to subtile dreams of what shall be On this our planet. I foresee a day When men shall skim the earth i' certain chairs Not drawn by horses but sped on by oil Or other matter, and ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... it. To the end that even sleep itself should not so stupidly escape from me, I have formerly caused myself to be disturbed in my sleep, so that I might the better and more sensibly relish and taste it. I ponder with myself of content; I do not skim over, but sound it; and I bend my reason, now grown perverse and peevish, to entertain it. Do I find myself in any calm composedness? is there any pleasure that tickles me? I do not suffer it to dally with my senses only; I associate ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... and as one lot are ready to be removed, and placed loose in a small hovel, with yard attached, others fill their places. We begin with new milk from the pail, which is continued for a fortnight after leaving the cow. Then skim-milk—boiled, and allowed to cool to the natural warmth—is substituted to the extent of one-third of the allowance. In another week the new milk is reduced to half, and at the same time, not before, boiled linseed is added to the mess.[20] As soon as they ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... Utensils. But then the private Brewer is not without his Benefits; for he can have his Malt ground at pleasure, his Tubs and moveable Coolers sweeter and better clean'd than the great fixed Tuns and Backs, he can skim off his top Yeast and leave his bottom Lees behind, which is what the great Brewer can't so well do; he can at discretion make additions of cold wort to his too forward Ales and Beers, which the great Brewer can't so conveniently do; he can Brew how and when he pleases, which the ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous

... Jupiter should really wish to give a bonne-bouche to Juno, Leda, or Venus, or any one of his thousand and one flames, let him skim the milky-way—transform the instrumental part of the music of the spheres into 'hautboys,' and compound the only dish worth the roseate lips of the gentle dames 'in nubibus,' and depend on it, the cups of Ganymede and Hebe will be rejected for ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... she can," quoth he. "She will skim like a bird over the snow; so get into the sleigh, and we will go straight off to ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... to boil slowly. Skim but do not stir. Boil until a little hardens in water. Then add the ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber

... always try to profit by my superiors. She has courage: I have none. I beat about the bush, and talk skim-milk; she uses the very word. She said we have been the dupe and the tool of a little scheming rascal, an anonymous coward, with motives as base as his heart is black—oh! oh! Ay, that is the way to speak of such a man; ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... the ceiling. On these shelves stood many capacious pans and basins of tin and earthenware, filled with milk, and most of them coated with superb yellow cream. Midway was the window, before which Miss Fortune was accustomed to skim her milk, and at the side of it was the mouth of a wooden pipe, or covered trough, which conveyed the refuse milk down to an enormous hogshead standing at the lower kitchen door, whence it was drawn as wanted for the use ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... air blows fresh on him:" "The waves dance gladly in his sight;" "The sea-birds call, and wheel, and skim—" "O, blessed morning light!" "He doth not hear their joyous call; he sees No beauty in the wave, nor feels ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... not a single iceberg is to be seen on this fantastic sea. Innumerable flocks of birds skim its surface, among them is a pelican which is shot. On a floating piece of ice is a bear of the Arctic species and of gigantic size. At last land is signalled. It is an island of a league in circumference, to which the name of Bennet Islet was given, in honour of ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... First I go over the period in some general history, if one is to be had; then I read very carefully my original authorities in the order of their estimated importance, making copious excerpts. Afterwards I skim my second-hand materials. Now I maintain that it is logical and natural to have the extracts before me in the order of my study. When unusually careful and critical treatment has been required, I have drawn off my memoranda from ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... steed along the drawbridge flies, Just as it trembled on the rise; Not lighter does the swallow skim Along the smooth lake's level brim: And when Lord Marmion reached his band, He halts, and turns with clenched hand, A shout of loud defiance pours, And shakes his gauntlet at ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... river became, as it were, a second home to him. Abraham Dyson had more than one wherry of his own in which Cuthbert was welcome to skim about upon the broad bosom of the great river. He soon became so skillful with the rude oars or the sail, that he was a match for the hardiest waterman on the river, and more than once Cherry had been permitted to accompany ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... I would skim afar o'er ocean, and drink of bliss my fill, O'er the thunders of Ni'gara and cataracts of Nile,— With rising rainbows wreathed, In mist and darkness sheathed, Where nought but spirits breathed Around me ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... which it had been stored, required sturdy appetites to make it even tolerable. Even in later days Frank T. Bullen was able to write: "I have often seen the men break up a couple of biscuits into a pot of coffee for their breakfast, and after letting it stand a minute or two, skim off the accumulated scum of vermin from the top—maggots, weevils, etc—to the extent of a couple of tablespoonsful, before they could shovel the mess into ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... familiar with cements of this kind long known among the people, and much used in the repairing of broken pottery, such as a cement compounded of quicklime made of oyster shells, mixed up with a glue made of skim-milk cheese, and another cement made also of quicklime mixed up with the whites of eggs. In Mrs. Marshall's cements, the organic matter is variously compounded of both animal and vegetable substances, while the earth generally employed is sulphate of lime; and the result is a close-grained ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... when I pushed off my boat in the morning, I disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted himself under the boat in the night. Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanus macularius) "teeter" along its stony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fish hawk sitting on a white pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wind of ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... soaked in a cup of cold water. Beat into the mixture the slightly beaten whites and crushed shells of two eggs. Heat to the boiling-point, stirring constantly, and let boil five minutes. After standing ten minutes skim off the froth, etc., and strain through a cheese-cloth folded double and ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill

... broke in; and lighter thoughts— Thoughts that but skim the surface of the mind, And stir not its profound—were interchanged As now more timely; for the Percivals Lacked not good appetites, and every meal Had its best stimulant in cheerfulness. "Where shall we go to pass our holidays?" The mother ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... me some of that cold porridge too," he said, with a defiant look at Jones; "yesterday's, if you have it, and a few potato peelings and a glass of skim milk." ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... toiling hand of Care; The panting herds repose: Yet hark! how through the peopled air The busy murmur glows! The insect youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honied spring, And float amid the liquid noon; Some lightly o'er the current skim, Some show their gaily gilded trim, Quick glancing ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... occasionally until the haricot boils; meantime cut one quart of carrots and turnips, half and half, in small balls, and add them, with one dozen button onions, a bouquet of sweet herbs, half a saltspoonful of pepper, and a teaspoonful of salt; simmer for one hour; take up the cutlets with a fork, skim out the vegetables, and remove the bouquet; lay the cutlets in a wreath on a hot dish, place the vegetables in the centre, and strain the gravy over all. Green peas, new turnips, or new potatoes, may replace the first named ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson

... gentlemen know what a breakfast is, Mr Nutt," said John; "but I am afraid we can't introduce your good wife's receipt into college; our cows give nothing but skim-milk. Well, now we had better be off, if you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... ma'am! Hossy and me has come a good ways to-day, and seen 'most all kinds. Are you acquainted any with a woman name of Weazle, down the ro'd about four mile from here? Ain't? Well, she's a case, I tell you. Long skinny kind of woman, looks like she'd bleed sour milk—skim—if she scratched her finger. She made up her mind I was goin' to cheat her, and she warn't goin' to be cheated, not she. ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards

... feelings or fancy. While thus employed, he unconsciously fell asleep. Wassamo had scarcely noticed it in his care to watch the kettle, and, when the fish were done, he took the kettle off. He spoke to his cousin, but received no answer. He took the wooden ladle to skim off the oil, for the fish were very fat. He had a flambeau of twisted bark in one hand to give light; but, when he came to take out the fish, he did not know how to manage to hold the light, so he took off his garters, and tied them tight round his head, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous

... those who know much of literary work are well aware that a writer may very easily become possessed by a sick disgust of books which never leaves him. He will look at volumes of extracts, he will skim poetry, he will read eagerly for a few days or weeks in order to get up a subject; but the pure delight in literature for its own sake has left him, and he is as decidedly prosaic a tradesman as his own hosier. ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... in another lot; one makes a white stock, the other brown. If the quantity is small, put them all together. Crack the bones, put them in the bottom of a large soup kettle, cover with cold water, bring slowly to boiling point and skim. Push the kettle to the back part of the stove, where the stock may simmer for at least three hours, then add an onion into which you have stuck twelve cloves, a bay leaf, a few celery tops, or a little celery seed, and a carrot cut into slices; simmer ...
— Made-Over Dishes • S. T. Rorer

... Our heroine was no coward; and while she felt the novelty of her situation, in landing through a surf, she also experienced a fair proportion of its wild delight. At moments, indeed, her heart was in her mouth, as the bubble of a boat floated on the very crest of a foaming breaker, appearing to skim the water like a swallow, and then she flushed and laughed, as, left by the glancing element, they appeared to linger behind as if ashamed of having been outdone in the headlong race. A few minutes sufficed for this excitement; for though the distance between the cutter and the land considerably ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... of the Nile, I'd see the Sandwich Islands, And Chimborazo's granite pile, And Scotland's rugged Highlands; I'd skim the sands of Timbuctoo; ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... readin', or if he has to, th' book is no fun. Did ye iver have something to do that ye ought to do, but didn't want to, an' while ye was wishin' ye was dead, did ye happen to pick up a newspaper? Ye know what occurred. Ye didn't jus' skim through th' spoortin' intillygince an' th' crime news. Whin ye got through with thim, ye read th' other quarther iv th' pa-aper. Ye read about people ye niver heerd iv, an' happenin's ye didn't undhersthand—th' fashion notes, th' theatrical gossip, th' s'ciety news ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne

... Oppression's ills; And some are in a far countree, 30 And some all restlessly at home; But never more, oh! never, we Shall meet to revel and to roam. But those hardy days flew cheerily![nz] And when they now fall drearily, My thoughts, like swallows, skim the main,[337] And bear my spirit back again Over the earth, and through the air, A wild bird and a wanderer. 'Tis this that ever wakes my strain, 40 And oft, too oft, implores again The few who may endure my lay,[oa] To follow me so far ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... deck. Now one sail and now another was added,—some rigged out so as just to skim the surface of the water, while with buckets and scoops the sails were wetted as high as they could be reached. Harry and David could see in the far distance a large ship, which from her narrow yards and the cut of her sails Harry said he thought was really a merchantman, which of course ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston

... steep, a drag in the form of a hoop of braided walrus hide would be thrown over the front of one of the komatik runners, but even then the dogs would have to run their hardest to preserve a safe distance between them and us, and out on the smooth ice of the bays we would shoot, to skim along with exhilarating swiftness. As we proceeded south we were interested in observing signs of spring. Towards the end of our journey we encountered much soft snow and ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... in the woods. What a commotion was there! The leaves were absolutely frantic. Now they would sweep up far into the air as if they never intended to descend again, and then taking curvatures, would skim away like birds; others would cluster together, and then roll along like a great quivering billow; others again would circle around in eddies like whirlpools, soaring up now and then in the likeness of a water-spout, whilst frequently tall columns would march down the broad aisles ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... similar to those of Captain Cook or Herman Melville when they first landed to skim the cream of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... are the same encounters in war and rivalries in love between Christian and Pagan champions; journeys through undiscovered lands and over untracked oceans; fantastic hyperboles of desire, ambition, jealousy, and rage, employed as motive passions. Enchanted forests; fairy ships that skim the waves without helm or pilot; lances endowed with supernatural virtues; charmed gardens of perpetual spring; dismal dungeons and glittering palaces, supply the furniture of this romance no less than of its predecessors. Rinaldo, like any other hero of the Renaissance, is agitated ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... she had to give me up. I was not of her monde; I am not now, either, but we sometimes meet. They are terrible people—her monde; all mounted upon stilts a mile high, and with pedigrees long in proportion. It is the skim of the milk of the old noblesse. Do you know what a Legitimist is, or an Ultramontane? Go into Madame de Cintre's drawing-room some afternoon, at five o'clock, and you will see the best preserved specimens. ...
— The American • Henry James

... gloomy at the end of the discussion; and a heavy silence had fallen on them. Then of a sudden the face of the Terror brightened; and he said with a touch of triumph in his tone: "I've got it; we'll feed them on skim-milk." ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... Castanier could travel in a few moments over the fertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons above African desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The same insight that could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend at a glance the nature of any material object, just as he caught as it were all flavors at once upon his tongue. He ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... sharp-clapping wings, dart its whole body, with the swiftness of an arrow, against its singled mark, yet so as to glance aloft the same instant, and descend skimming; much as the thin stone, shot with horizontal cast of arm, having touched and torn the surface of the lake, ascends to skim, touch, and tear again. So mingled the feathered multitude in the grim game of war. It was a storm in which the wind was birds, and the sea men. And ever as each bird arrived at the rear of the enemy, it turned, ascended, and sped to the front ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald

... of ancient times, for now the swain Returning late may pass the woods in vain, And never hope to see the mighty train; In vain the dairy now with mint is dressed, The dairy-maid expects no fairy guest, To skim the bowls and after pay the feast. She sighs and shakes her empty shoes in vain, No silver penny to reward her pain: For priests, with prayers and other godly gear, Have made ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... Must he not look a noble bird, sailing as he does calmly round and round, far up in the air, over those southern seas? From the length of his wings, the albatross has some little trouble in raising himself from the surface of the water, where he often floats at rest. He has to skim along half flying and half running for some distance, until his wings are clear of the water; then he soars away, seldom flapping his wings, but rising, sinking, and floating through the air, as if kept up by some internal power. As he seldom is obliged to flap his wings ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")

... brain, That bid him onward flee, The Indian moon was on the wane And drooped the hawthorne tree. The light canoe of rounded bark Scarce dared to skim the flood, For they had come with meaning dark To ravage ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... to a long stretch of level ground then, smooth and hard; and the horses as with common consent set out to gallop shoulder to shoulder in a wild, exhilarating skim across the plain. Talking was impossible. The man reflected that he was making great strides in experience, first a prayer and then a pledge, all in the wilderness. If any one had told him he was going into the West for this, he would ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... of the drum, and from mixing with the cream which has already been separated. The upper part of the drum is fitted with an annular flange, about 11/2 in. from the top, reaching to within one-sixteenth of an inch of the periphery. After the separation of the skim milk from the cream, the former passes behind and above this flange through the aperture, B, and is removed by means of the tube, D, furnished with a steel tip projecting from the cover of the machine into the space between the top of the drum and the annular ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... without fixing myself on any one, in order that nothing should escape me, principally attending to the doors. I took advantage of the opportunity to say a word here and a word there, to pass continually near those who were suspected, to skim and interrupt all conversations. D'Antin was often joined by the Duc de Noailles, who had resumed his habit of the morning, and continually followed me with his eyes. He had an air of consternation, was agitated and embarrassed in countenance—he commonly so free and easy! D'Antin ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... face peering cautiously and joyously from the cabin door. Three times he entangled his feet hopelessly and floundered like a great fish in the snow; then he caught the "swing" of it and at the end of half an hour began to find a pleasurable exhilaration, even excitement, in his ability to skim over the feathery surface of this great white sea without so much as sinking to his ankle bones. When he slipped the shoes off and stood them up beside his rifle against the cabin, he was panting. His heart was pounding. His lungs drank in the cold, balsam-scented air like a suction pump and ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... sometimes tried to sell the women-folks a skimmer, but he told them that their women had got a better skimmer than they could make, in the shell of their clams; it was shaped just right for this purpose. They call them "skim-alls" in some places. He also said that the sun-squawl was poisonous to handle, and when the sailors came across it, they did not meddle with it, but hove it out of their way. I told him that I had handled it that afternoon, and had felt ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... public attention than the gratification of the misanthropic few who mope in corners or stalk up and down leafless and almost solitary walks during this hanging and drowning season. Nevertheless, all men are more or less misanthropes, or they affect to be so; for only skim off the bile of a true critic, or the minds of the hundred thousand who read newspapers, and look first for the bankrupts and deaths. Sugar and wormwood and wormwood and sugar are the standing dishes, but as we read the other day, "there ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various



Words linked to "Skim" :   see, cover, coat, covering, natural covering, aquaplane, touch, nonfat, fat-free, glide, reading, withdraw, take away, examine, skip, throw, surface, read, take, skimmer, remove, fatless



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