skirting

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The boards fitted along the base of interior walls, covering the joint between the wall and the floor, taken collectively.

   Dust kept gathering along the top of the skirting in the old study.

   Builders usually fit the skirting after the flooring has been laid.

   Similarbaseboard

   Note

   The shortened, collective form of skirting board: one word for the whole run of boards around a room. It belongs with the vocabulary of interior trim. Arthur Conan Doyle has Challenger look up at the cornice and round at the skirting, and Railway Magazine in 1947 sets a royal stateroom's skirting and moldings in walnut. Say skirting board for a single piece and skirting for the boards as a set.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of skirt.

   The highway, skirting the mountains, offered travelers a long view of the valley.

   She spent the whole meeting skirting every difficult question.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs. In "the road is skirting the coast" it is the participle of a progressive verb. In "skirting the issue only delays it" it is a gerund, standing as the subject of the clause. Both uses carry the verb's full range, from tracing the edge of a place to dodging a hard question. Once it takes a determiner or a plural, it becomes the noun of avoidance.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The act of moving around the edge of something, or of avoiding it.

   Her careful skirting of the flooded path added an hour to the walk.

   The official's skirting of the question frustrated the reporters.

   Similaravoidance, evasion, sidestepping, circumvention, dodging

   Note

   Here the gerund settles into a countable noun, so it can take a plural. The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research in 1982 praises writers whose "skirtings around the laws of defamation are a joy to read." It takes of for the thing avoided (her skirting of the question) or around, which stresses the careful circling. One word covers both the literal detour and the figurative dodge.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   Skirts taken collectively, or the fabric from which skirts are made.

   The mill produces high-quality skirting for several fashion houses.

   Bolts of patterned skirting lined the shelves of the fabric store.

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