skiffle

1. uncountableA type of folk music, with jazz and blues influences, using homemade or improvised instruments.

   They've been skiffling as we talked about in last chapter, and can now play a bit so their interests are broadening.

   2021, Matt Haskins, What Time Are We On?

   2 more examples

   The cats and the bats—and I hope you dig that one about the bats—played like mad in the backbeat 12, skiffling and skuffling , trying to get under the wire .

   1943, Negro Digest - Volume 2, page 47

   In Liverpool, the Quarrymen were one group of teenage Donegan admirers, but there were plenty of others: the Martinis, the Raving Texans, the Bluegenes and the Blackjacks—all skiffling their hearts out .

   2012, Patrick Humphries, Lonnie Donegan and the Birth of British Rock & Roll

present singular third person skiffles · participle present skiffling · participle past skiffled · past skiffled

1. To play skiffle.

plural skiffles

1. Synonym of skiff (“light shower of rain or snow; light dusting of snow or ice (on ground, water, etc)”).

   For quotations using this term, see Citations:skiffle.

   1 more example

   This is when hardy divers such as American mergansers, goldeneyes, buffleheads, and scaup pay my lake a late staging visit, bobbing on the last patches of open water against the season's first skiffles of snow. Gradually the nights get [colder].

   1999, Monte Hummel, Wintergreen: Reflections from Loon Lake

   Synonyms: skiff

present singular third person skiffles · participle present skiffling · participle past skiffled · past skiffled

1. To move in a way that stirs up and moves anything loose lying on the surface.

   Peter set off at a run, his feet skiffling up sand, his muscles cramping , his bones shrieking .

   2018, Kirsty Logan, The Gloaming

   3 more examples

   As I am sitting at the stoplight under the maple and oak and cedar trees I see three tiny kids skiffling and shuffling and skittering and scuffling In the leaves

   2016, Brian Doyle, The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be, page 87

   He shakes his head in puzzlement and bends for the suitcases, his Salvation Army shoes encased in plastic bread bags for protection skiffling in the gravel as he resumes his pilgrimage, this rabbit-faced disciple of the Lord, his little grey teeth overhanging his thin lower lip.

   2016, Kyp Harness, Wigford Rememberies

   Shame blew through me in circles like a typhoon over Lake Tanganyika, skiffling the cool, calm waters into tidal waves.

   2020, Sasha Lauren, The Paris Predicament, page 193