What's the difference between scrap and skirmish?

Scrap


Definition:

  • (v. t.) Something scraped off; hence, a small piece; a bit; a fragment; a detached, incomplete portion.
  • (v. t.) Specifically, a fragment of something written or printed; a brief excerpt; an unconnected extract.
  • (v. t.) The crisp substance that remains after drying out animal fat; as, pork scraps.
  • (v. t.) Same as Scrap iron, below.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It is a moment to be grateful for what remains of Labour's hard left: an amendment to scrap the cap was at least tabled by John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn but stood no chance.
  • (2) As calls grew to establish why nobody stepped in to save Daniel, it was also revealed that the boy's headteacher – who saw him scavenging for scraps – has not been disciplined and has been put in charge of a bigger school.
  • (3) That means scrapping David Cameron’s unqualified teacher policy, which has produced a 16% increase in the number of unqualified teachers in our schools.
  • (4) Across a dusty lot sits a heap of scrap metal, patrolled by a couple of emaciated dogs, while a toddler squats in the street, examining the sole of a discarded shoe.
  • (5) Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, confirmed in his first media policy speech yesterday that Labour's plan for independently financed news consortiums would be scrapped .
  • (6) The prison suicide rate, at 120 deaths per 100,000 people, is about 10 times higher than the rate in the general population.” The report calls for a recently revised incentives and earned privileges regime to be scrapped and for an undertaking that prisoners with mental health problems or at known risk of suicide should never be placed in solitary.
  • (7) "They don't go to secondary school – they go out scrapping with horses and carts, and make a living from collecting metal.
  • (8) Clegg has called for a faster process towards increasing the personal tax allowance to £10,000, and the Treasury chief secretary, Danny Alexander, wants higher rate tax relief on pensions to be scrapped.
  • (9) In the interview, he also pledged to scrap the 5% rate of VAT on sanitary products, known as the “tampon tax”.
  • (10) We’ve sent out all the boards and there’s still loads of people flooding in, we don’t know what to do.’ It happened in Leeds North West, too – they started the day, they had so many activists that they went: ‘Right, let’s scrap our whole strategy, we’re going to just print off the electoral register instead’ – and rather than focusing on likely Labour voters, which is what you would normally do, they knocked on all the doors on the electoral register – that’s unheard of.” The seat saw a 14% swing to Labour, overturning a Lib Dem majority of almost 3,000 and replacing it with a 4,000 Labour lead.
  • (11) Wang Yongchen, who runs Green Earth Volunteers, one of China’s oldest environmental groups, cautioned that while the decision to scrap plans for dams on the Nu was a significant triumph, it was not necessarily a permanent one.
  • (12) Service providers say they will have no choice except to charge patients a co-payment for services such as blood tests after the federal government announced in its budget update that it would scrap incentives for pathology services, and reduce bulk billing incentives from 15% of the Medicare benefits schedule fee to 10% for diagnostics.
  • (13) The Times editor, James Harding, recently decided to revive the supplement following reader complaints at his decision to scrap it seven months earlier .
  • (14) Japan scrapped its original plan for the national stadium last month in the face of widespread outrage after costs ballooned to £1.34bn ($2.1bn), nearly twice the original estimates – an unusual move for an Olympic host city this late in the process.
  • (15) Time to scrap all honours everywhere, including UK.” Australians had their chance to ditch the monarchy in 1999.
  • (16) Scrapping the tax cuts for the wealthy alone would be enough to make up for the shortfall in social security; scrapping them entirely would halt the rise in the national debt over the next decade.
  • (17) The following summer, the coastal city Qidong scrapped a pipeline plan after about a thousand protesters stormed government offices and overturned cars.
  • (18) Mention of discrimination on the basis of categories such as ethnicity, migration status, culture, economic situation or age as a protected status were also scrapped from the document, in an attempt to appease the African and Arab groups.
  • (19) The announcement will mean scrapping a review process set up by Labor in October 2012 to examine the cases of 55 mostly Tamil refugees, deemed to be a threat by Asio.
  • (20) In his only specific growth measure, he said Britain's planning laws would have to be scrapped so more housing could be built, vowing to scrap "the suffocating bureaucracy" that he said was holding economic growth back.

Skirmish


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To fight slightly or in small parties; to engage in a skirmish or skirmishes; to act as skirmishers.
  • (v. i.) A slight fight in war; a light or desultory combat between detachments from armies, or between detached and small bodies of troops.
  • (v. i.) A slight contest.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This we can see writ large in the prime minister’s skirmishes with Philip Hammond , the only member of government visibly considering the national interest.
  • (2) Manouras added: We will only know once the coroner has conducted an autopsy, but what I can say is that there were no police or skirmishes at the spot at which he died.
  • (3) But decades of struggle and skirmishes with neighbours have resulted in a tightly guarded border, and they were soon captured by men in uniform.
  • (4) On Wembley Way the party atmosphere had been briefly punctuated by a skirmish between rival fans.
  • (5) Benghazi's special forces, who declared support for Haftar, have skirmished with the militias he is targeting but the general himself has not yet been inside the city.
  • (6) But the confrontation quickly escalated into a series of skirmishes as the two sides played a deadly cat and mouse game in the centre of the city.
  • (7) On the face of it, this was little more than a skirmish in a town on Mali's north-east confines.
  • (8) For the UN negotiators in Qatar, this year's talks are just the skirmishes before the key date of 2015, when a new global agreement must be achieved.
  • (9) But Panorama's North Korea film, due to be broadcast on Monday, presents a challenge of a different order to the skirmish earlier last week about playing a song on the charts that could be taken as disrespectful to Lady Thatcher.
  • (10) No, I see it as being the right opportunity at the right time,” says a man desperate to break Wearside’s perennial relegation skirmishes.
  • (11) That interpretation was then corroborated by Labour MPs, who either hadn’t read the document or saw it as a handy weapon in skirmishes for control of the party’s election message.
  • (12) 4.08pm: Below the line, baerchen is upbeat : "Having watched England's superstar striker give the ball away umpty-nine times against Man City last night with some of the clumsiest touches seen since my brief skirmish with a girl from Hackenthorpe in 1971, they might as well give the job to Charles Chimp for all the difference it will make.
  • (13) It is the latest skirmish in the bitter infighting that has befallen Ukip since the election in which the party won 4 million votes but just one parliamentary seat.
  • (14) While the skirmish between Chris Christie and Paul over terrorism and its prevention via surveillance got a lot of media attention this week , it's more helpful to look at the general trend among potential candidates.
  • (15) Police fired volleys of tear gas canisters into a crowd of thousands - people in office clothes as well as youths in masks who had fought skirmishes throughout the day - scattering them into side streets and nearby hotels.
  • (16) When TV cameras start filming skirmishes in the crowd, Trump argues their focus on the protesters is evidence of liberal media bias.
  • (17) This rapidly escalating skirmish in American culture wars came after the Department of Justice sued North Carolina for a state law that forced people to only use public bathrooms that correspond to the gender listed on their birth certificates.
  • (18) In Tripoli, fighters from the GNC’s militia force, Libya Dawn , have turned on each other in several nights of skirmishing, even as pro-Tobruk forces battle Libya Dawn for control of the coastal highway west of the city.
  • (19) Skirmishes have flared outside Iraqi’s second largest city over the last few days with an airstrike on one of its main bridges on Sunday.
  • (20) It's the first battle cry in the pair's hair-raising physical and mental skirmish and has become something approaching a catchphrase.