skep

Late Old English sceppe, from Old Norse skeppa (“basket”). Cognate with Danish skæppe (“an old Danish unit of measure equalling 17.4 l”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈskɛp/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛp

skep (plural skeps)

2. A basket.
   • 1956, Anthony Burgess, Time for a Tiger (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 115:

     Old women crouched over bags of Siamese rice, skeps of red and green peppers, purple egg-plants, bristly rambutans, pineapples, durians.

4. A beehive made of straw or wicker.

   Synonym: skip

   Hypernyms: beehive, hive

   • 1958, John Crompton, A Hive of Bees:

     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.

   • 1977, Patrick O'Brian, The Mauritius Command:

     He prised a skep from its stool and held it out, inverted, showing the dirty wreck of combs, with the vile grubs spinning their cocoons.

   • 2020, Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet:

     She installs seven skeps at the furthest edge of the garden; on warm July days it is possible to hear the restless rumble of the bees from the house.

• creel
• skip

From Dutch scheppen, from Proto-Germanic *skapjaną.

skep (present skep, present participle skeppende, past participle geskep or geskape)

1. to create, make
2. (religion, of God) to create, call into existence

   Waarom het God die wêreld geskape?

   Why did God create the world?

• The form geskape is restricted to the religious sense. This is one of the very few irregular participles that can be used to form the perfect tenses (cf. oorlede for another example).

From Proto-West Germanic *skāp, from Proto-Germanic *skēpą. Cognates include Old English sċēap, Old Saxon skāp and Old Dutch scāp.

• IPA^(key): /ˈskeːp/, [ˈskɛːp]

skēp n

1. sheep

• North Frisian:

  Föhr-Amrum: schep, schap

  Goesharde: schäip

  Helgoland: skēap

  Mooring: schäip

  Sylt: Sjip

  Wiedingharde: sees

• East Frisian:

  Harlingerland Frisian: schaip

  Saterland Frisian: Skäip, Schäip

  Wangerooge Frisian: schaip

  Wursten Frisian: schepp, scheep

• West Frisian: skiep

  Hindeloopen: skeep

  Schiermonnikoog: schiep

• Norbruis, Stefan (2015) “skiep”, in Etymological Dictionary of West Frisian Farming Vocabulary‎^[1], Leiden: Leiden University, page 40.
• Bremmer, Rolf H. (2009) An Introduction to Old Frisian: History, Grammar, Reader, Glossary, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN

skep

1. first-person singular present indicative active of skepja
2. second-person singular present imperative active of skepja