skate, noun

Origin:
English, AfrikaansShow more Etymology dubious: perhaps a narrowing of sense of the general English skate mean or contemptible person (as in cheap-skate); or a Royal Navy name for a troublesome rating, ‘a leave-breaker and “bad hat” generally’ (E. Partridge, Dict. of Slang, 1967); or perhaps from Afrikaans skuit (see Goldstuck quotation, 1983).
derogatory, slang
A disreputable White male (from a working-class background) whose behaviour is uncouth, hedonistic, and irresponsible; gé sense 2.
1975 Informant, Grahamstown (now Makhanda, Eastern Cape)Skate. Difficult to define. Low class. Wear all the wrong things — don’t know what goes, don’t know how to behave. Usually four in a Cortina G.T. with G.T. stripes, fluff on the dash board and an orange on the aerial...Behaviour rather than speech is the determinant.
1983 A. Goldstuck in Frontline Oct. 58This is the skuit (or skate, if you’re saying it in English). In colloquial Afrikaans the word refers to excretion, but..the people thus labelled consider it a term of endearment. Which says something about the skates...They’re South Africa’s answer to the punks or the skinheads of Britain. Nihilists.
1983 A. Goldstuck in Frontline Oct. 61The skate has his own dialect...‘I got a graft, a cabbie, I got stukkies, booze, and I got zol. I tune you, mate, if I can get one mamba chow a day, I scheme life is kif’...Freddie has vacant eyes, a happy brain, a pile of threatening letters from the SADF, a yen for anything punishable by law, and immense debts. In short, he is a fully qualified skate, able to operate anywhere on the East Rand...Jonathan Handley..has been making a study of the skate subculture...‘The skate..is unemployed, lives with his parents, and has no direction in life...He isn’t the rebel without a cause. He is no longer the romantic that the ducktail was.’
1983 Cape Times 9 Dec. 16The 1950s skates..knew their virility lay in their greased back hair.
1987 P. Slabolepszy in Style May 100They’re not really ‘skates’. There are a helluva lot of people who’re like that out there and they’ve made a lot of money, and they’re basically middle-class.
1989 M. Brand in Fair Lady 25 Oct. 93Danger: these buzz words have gone decidedly off...Kugel (borderline case). Moffie. Safe. Skate. [etc.].
A disreputable White male (from a working-class background) whose behaviour is uncouth, hedonistic, and irresponsible; gé sense 2.
Entry Navigation

Visualise Quotations

Quotation summary

Senses

19751989

Browse Related Words

By Category

Titles and Modes of Address

By Origin

English
Afrikaans

By Usage

derogatory or offensive
slang
skat, skattie, nounn.skebenga, nounn.
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary Unit for South African English