Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

skitter

UK /ˈskɪtə(ɹ)/ · US /ˈskɪtɚ/ verb, noun

Forms skitters skittering skittered

  1. verb (intransitive) To move hurriedly or as by bouncing or twitching; to scamper, to scurry; to scuttle. “I opened the cabinet and a number of cockroaches went skittering off into the darkness.”
  2. verb (intransitive) To make a scratching or scuttling noise while, or as if, skittering.
  3. verb (transitive) To move or pass (something) over a surface quickly so that it touches only at intervals; to skip, to skite.
  4. noun (also figuratively) A skittering movement. “A skitter of activity. A skitter of gooseflesh.”
  5. verb (transitive, Northern England, Scotland) To cause to have diarrhea.
  6. verb (intransitive, Northern England, Scotland) To suffer from a bout of diarrhea; to produce thin excrement.
  7. noun (Scotland, Northern England, uncountable) Often skitters: the condition of suffering from diarrhea; thin excrement.

Synonyms

scamper scurry skip skite scuttle skim

Etymology

Possibly a frequentative of skite (“to move lightly and hurriedly; to move suddenly, particularly in an oblique direction”) (Scotland, Northern England). The noun is derived from the verb.

From skite (“to defecate”) + -er (frequentative suffix). The noun is derived from the verb.

Webster’s 1913

  1. verb To move or pass (something) over a surface quickly so that it touches only at intervals; to skip.
  2. verb To pass or glide lightly or with quick touches at intervals; to skip; to skim.

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “skitter”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details