noun
-
a minor short-lived military engagement
-
any brisk clash or encounter, usually of a minor nature
verb
Related Words
See battle 1.
Other Word Forms
- outskirmish verb (used with object)
- skirmisher noun
Etymology
Origin of skirmish
1300–50; (noun) Middle English skirmysshe < Old French eskirmiss-, long stem of eskirmir < Germanic (compare Old High German skirman ); replacing Middle English scarmouche < Old French escaramoucher ( Scaramouch ); (v.) late Middle English scarmuchen, scarmusshen to skirmish, Middle English skirmisshen to brandish a weapon < Old French escar ( a ) mucher to skirmish; vowels influenced by Old French eskirmiss-
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The Angels are frustrated by all of this, and in particular by what they consider the curiously timed skirmishes over their 21-year-old Los Angeles name.
From Los Angeles Times
The Jan. 29 meeting was a byproduct of a legal skirmish between the Fed and the Justice Department.
From Barron's
Allegra Goodman’s family saga coaxes, in Sam Sacks’s words, “excellent, bone-dry humor” out of the skirmishes and long-running battles among members of a loving, fractious clan.
By February 1862, more than two thousand soldiers had been killed, and roughly a hundred thousand had been wounded in dozens of minor skirmishes and major battles.
From Literature
To an outsider, the situation in Oxford might seem like a classic local skirmish between angry residents and their council.
From BBC
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
