skeller

present singular third person skellers · participle present skellering · participle past skellered · past skellered

1. dialectalobsoleteto warp; to bend; to twistFirst known use 17th c.

   The stable door was not a perfect fit. The lower half was skellered and left a two-inch gap big enough to need stuffing in winter-time to prevent the snow driving in; […]

   2004 [1994], Jean Brown, chapter 16, in We'll See the Cuckoo, Palatine Books, page 306

   3 more examples

   It is grooved at the back and stayed with oak or mahogany cross-pieces or clamps for preventing skellering or twisting from damp and changes of temperature, which would spoil the flatness of the working side.

   1914, John Handsley Dales, “Apparatus and Materials for Drawing” (chapter II), in A Manual of Mechanical Drawing, Cambridge; New York: w:Cambridge University Press, w:G. P. Putnam's Sons, page 4

   […] on the other hand, rapidity of machining is obtained when the steel is in the normalised condition, but time is lost in subsequently heat treating and, what is more serious, unless this process is carefully carried out, warping and skellering may render the part too much out of truth for final grinding.

   1917, Bagnall-Wilde, “Eighth Meeting, 52nd Session”, in The Aeronautical Journal, volume XXI, number 83, page 337

   It is large, very. It has a strange but attractive shape, like an oval box the top of which has been left out in the rain (which of course, it has) so that it has warped or, as they say in Rudden, West Riding, skellered.

   1969, Stanley Hyland, Top Bloody Secret, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, page 125