(n.) An inferior quality of leather, made of split sheepskin, tanned by immersion in sumac, and dyed. It is used for hat linings, pocketbooks, bookbinding, etc.
(n.) The cutting tool or machine used in splitting leather or skins, as sheepskins.
Example Sentences:
(1) Part of that must be down to the way the language of welfare reform is surreptitiously laced with innuendo about scroungers and skivers.
(2) They say: "While the chancellor paints a picture of so-called 'strivers' and 'skivers', our organisations see the reality on the ground: families scraping by in low-paid work, or being bounced from insecure jobs to benefits and back again."
(3) Political rhetoric now as in Orwell's day exploits not only euphemism ("austerity") but dysphemism ("skivers") and loaded metaphor ("fiscal cliff"): in our time, weaponised soundbites are deliberately engineered to smuggle the greatest amount of persuasion into the smallest space, to be virally replicated on rolling news.
(4) To justify the cuts, the Tories are likely to employ a narrative of skivers v strivers, suggesting a clear division between a large, permanently welfare-dependent group and the rest of the population who pay taxes to support it.
(5) "Our clients don't appreciate being put in that scroungers and skivers bracket, because they are trying to break out of unemployment."
(6) Skiver” and “scrounger” bashing has had very real consequences.
(7) Skivers, on the other hand, are lazy, unreliable and manipulative, choosing to live at others' expense so that they can sleep, watch television, abuse various substances and fritter away their time.
(8) We're told that the cost of housing benefit is out of control and is because of welfare scroungers and skivers, when the truth is that it is out of control because 10,000 new working households every month have to make a claim as rents keep going up and up while wages are static or fall.
(9) A lot of his constituents felt that they were "being branded as skivers" and "demonised by the system", he said.
(10) Or in the parlance of the moment, "the strivers" v "the skivers".
(11) However, the government’s constant attempts to paint honest people – like low-paid workers relying on tax credits and universal credit – as ‘skivers’ is creating a hostile and accusatory environment.
(12) In George Osborne's dichotomy of strivers versus skivers, they fall on the government-approved side.
(13) Meanwhile, at the launch of a report on poverty published by the Church in Wales and Oxfam Cymru on Tuesday, the archbishop led calls for citizens to question false stereotypes of those in poverty as shirkers and skivers.
(14) And the most insidious myth, increasingly pervasive, is that the poor are workshy , scrounging out chaotic lives in a nation where strivers are paying their taxes for skivers.
(15) Cruel, too, has been the language of "strivers" v "skivers" , which has framed much of the debate around the welfare benefits uprating (more accurately downrating) bill, which recently completed its passage through parliament.
(16) The ground has been well prepared by the government's divisive narrative that separates the population into two opposing camps: strivers and skivers.
(17) You’re trying to get on in life, this narrative goes, but Labour is championing “skivers” or foreigners instead.
(18) Moreover the demonising division of the world into strivers and skivers belies the constant movement in and out of work at the bottom of an insecure labour market.
(19) Britain has been through six years of austerity and nastiness, in which disabled people have had their benefits cut and been labelled by ministers as skivers.
(20) To recap: as a desperate Conservative party scrabbles around for anything approaching a sense of purpose, David Cameron and George Osborne are sounding ever more shrill about the supposed divide between "workers" and "shirkers", or "strivers" and "skivers"; and this latest proposal is aimed at alchemising popularity from prejudice by capping most working-age benefits – including tax credits – at 1% a year until 2015, severing the link between social security (can we use that term, rather than that ideologically loaded US import "welfare"?)
Sliver
Definition:
(v. t.) To cut or divide into long, thin pieces, or into very small pieces; to cut or rend lengthwise; to slit; as, to sliver wood.
(n.) A long piece cut ot rent off; a sharp, slender fragment; a splinter.
(n.) A strand, or slender roll, of cotton or other fiber in a loose, untwisted state, produced by a carding machine and ready for the roving or slubbing which preceeds spinning.
(n.) Bait made of pieces of small fish. Cf. Kibblings.
Example Sentences:
(1) Once in the mountains, we were immediately careering along slivers of swerving tarmac under a crystal-blue sky.
(2) The slivers of muscle grow between pieces of Velcro and flex and contract as they develop.
(3) Given their ages (Pacquiao is 36), it was not a total surprise that neither of them could sustain the quality of the exchanges or the vigour of their past over the course of 12 rounds, although there were slivers of magic from both.
(4) Slivers of articular cartilage were stored in Ham's medium, plasma, polyvinyl pyrrolidone, and dimethyl sulphoxide at 0, -20, 4, and 38C.
(5) But in just a tiny sliver of its history - the last few thousand years - the patterns of vegetation altered much faster than before.
(6) All the foreign bodies evaluated (lead and plastic pellets, pieces of wire, nails, needles, small fragments of rock and glass, wooden slivers, surgical sponges and surgical threads) were detectable with ultrasound.
(7) • House Republicans passed or planned to pass at least 11 mini spending bills to fund slivers of government.
(8) But visible change has accelerated rapidly in the past few thousand years – a tiny sliver of the Earth’s history.
(9) As I prepared to make tracks, Charlie Meckna pointed up at some slivers of grey cloud that hung in the vast powder-blue sky.
(10) There was little cinching of the waist, and almost no flashing of leg; sex appeal came through the element of surprise, as the designer put it backstage, with unexpected slivers of skin shown at the back of a dress.
(11) For people with busy lives Slivers of Time is a website that allows you to show volunteer-seeking organisations the precise hours you are free and would like to help organisations in your local area.
(12) Huhhhhhhhh,” goes another, when the drowsy, pitched-down vocal of DOEP drops in, a sliver of R&B squashed under a hobnailed boot.
(13) "We believe scale will be an increasing source of competitive advantage in both the confectionery category and the global food business as a whole," said Rosenfeld, who pointed out that the tie-up will allow Kraft to become the world's leading confectionery company with a market share of 14.8%, a sliver higher than its US rival Mars, which recently bought Wrigley's chewing gum to take its share to 14.6%.
(14) Far from being a straight-up sci-fi, it adds a dash of Scandi-noir, a pinch of thriller and the occasional sliver of black humour into the mix.
(15) And, whatever happens to nature, it is our own highly complex interconnected society, built on a lucky period of stable climate during a tiny sliver of planetary time, that looks most at risk.
(16) 12 cords were cut with scissors, and 4 with a sharpened sliver of reed.
(17) An earlier version said that Holyrood controls only a small slither, rather than sliver, of its own spending.
(18) With his teeth caked in slivers of cola nuts, he said he had tried to board earlier convoys but there had not been enough space.
(19) When an attempt was made to remove the screw 12 weeks after its insertion, the screw broke at its neck releasing several small slivers of metal into the joint.
(20) They can even say Obama only beat Romney by 50% to 48% – a sliver that only grows large in the undemocratic electoral college.