skirmish

Other forms of skirmish

plural

skirmishes·

past tense

skirmished·

present participle

skirmishing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about skirmish

What does skirmish mean?

skirmish means "a minor short-term fight". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in skirmish?

skirmish has 2 syllables: skir-mish. The stress falls on "skir". In IPA it is /ˈskɝmɪʃ/.

What is another word for skirmish?

Close synonyms include brush, clash, encounter. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is skirmish a common word?

skirmish is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.