skips

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of skip.

   The child skips lightly over each crack in the sidewalk.

   Whenever the meeting runs long, she skips the closing remarks.

   Note

   Here the form works both with and without an object, and that is the quickest way to read it. Without one it moves: a child skips along, a stone skips across water. With one it acts on something: she skips a stone, skips a stage, skips a class. That last use, missing an event, is informal. In careful writing, "misses" or "does not attend" reads better.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of skip.

   With three quick skips, the flat stone crossed half the pond.

   The CD was badly scratched, and its skips ruined the last two songs.

   Note

   One plural serves several quite different skips: leaps and jumps, omissions, a gamer's trick for bypassing a section meant to be mandatory, a musical move of more than one degree at once, even people who vanish to avoid being found. Context alone sorts them out. Keep it apart from the identical verb form: "two skips" counts things, while "she skips" describes an action.

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