Skep
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A basket.
"Old women crouched over bags of Siamese rice, skeps of red and green peppers, purple egg-plants, bristly rambutans, pineapples, durians."
- 2 a domed beehive made of twisted straw wordnet
- 3 A beehive made of straw or wicker.
"Three of the hives had been overturned and the others had been rocked to and fro. The modern hive is a fearful thing to upset; the combs are not static as in a skep, but hang loosely: when the hive is overturned they smash and pile up like a telescoped train."
- 4 a large round wicker basket (used on farms) wordnet
- 1 To transfer (bees) into a skep. transitive
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Old women crouched over bags of Siamese rice, skeps of red and green peppers, purple egg-plants, bristly rambutans, pineapples, durians."
Etymology
Late Old English sceppe, from Old Norse skeppa (“basket”). Cognate with Danish skæppe (“an old Danish unit of measure equalling 17.4 l”).
Related phrases
More for "skep"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.