Skirmish

How to spell skirmish

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce skirmish

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does skirmish mean?

1. nounA brief, minor fight or clash between small groups, whether military or figurative.
2. verbTo engage in a brief, minor fight or clash.

Skirmish in a sentence

• noun

  A brief skirmish broke out between the two patrols near the border.

• verb

  The rival camps would often skirmish over access to the river.

• noun

  The meeting ended with a verbal skirmish over the budget figures.

• verb

  Lawyers continued to skirmish over the wording of the contract.

Where does skirmish come from?

Language of origin: French

This word reached English in the 1300s from Old French, where escarmouche named a brief clash between small bodies of troops, and the related verb eskirmir meant 'to fence' or 'to fight with a weapon'. That Old French verb was itself of Germanic origin, tied to a root meaning 'to defend' or 'to protect', the same family that gives us the word 'screen' and the old sense of warding off blows. Italian preserved a cousin in scaramuccia, which later produced the stock comic character Scaramouche, a boastful clown forever picking little fights. English speakers reshaped the borrowed form with the familiar -ish ending seen in verbs like 'finish' and 'punish', which is why the spelling ends in -mish rather than the French -mouche. The hidden trap is the unstressed second syllable, written -mish but easily slurred, and the silent debate over whether an 'a' lurks after the 'sk'; it does not.

How the word is built

• skirm- (from Old French eskirmir: to fence, fight)
• -ish (verb/noun ending)