Skite
To splatter, splash, or shoot something forcefully. A drink can skite over the rim of a glass; mud skites up off a passing car. Also: to move at speed - 'he skited round the corner'. The noun 'skitter' means diarrhoea, with the same Norse-origin imagery.
Etymology
From Old Norse 'skjuta' meaning to shoot or to launch. The Norse-derived Ulster Scots vocabulary preserves the original explosive sense - skiting is shooting fast in liquid or in motion. The derived forms 'skitter' (a fast splattery thing, or diarrhoea) and 'scoot' (to move quickly) come from the same Norse root.
In a sentence
"He skited the tea straight across the table - the wee one screamed."
Historical notes
Skite is one of a small family of Norse-origin Ulster Scots verbs that English does not have direct equivalents for. The combination of splatter-plus-speed is the distinctive sense: a thing skites because it moves fast and arrives messily. The Norse-Ulster vocabulary inheritance is densest in body, weather, and motion words - lug, gob, skite, foundered - which tells you something about the contact period between Norse settlers and the local population.
Sources
- Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), entry SKITE v., n. · dictionary
- Macafee, Caroline. A Concise Ulster Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1996. · dictionary