pluck vs skim

pluck

noun
  • An instance of plucking or pulling sharply. 

  • Guts, nerve, fortitude or persistence. 

  • The lungs, heart with trachea and often oesophagus removed from slaughtered animals. 

  • Cheap wine. 

verb
  • To take or remove (someone) quickly from a particular place or situation. 

  • To pull something sharply; to pull something out 

  • To pull or twitch sharply. 

  • To remove feathers from a bird. 

  • To play a string instrument pizzicato. 

  • To gently play a single string, e.g. on a guitar, violin etc. 

  • Of a glacier: to transport individual pieces of bedrock by means of gradual erosion through freezing and thawing. 

skim

noun
  • The act of skimming. 

  • Skim milk. 

  • That which is skimmed off. 

  • A cursory reading, skipping the details. 

  • Theft of money from a business before the transaction has been recorded, thus avoiding detection. 

verb
  • To surreptitiously scan a payment card in order to obtain its information for fraudulent purposes. 

  • To pass near the surface of; to brush the surface of; to glide swiftly along the surface of. 

  • To read quickly, skipping some detail. 

  • To throw an object so it bounces on water. 

  • To scrape off; to remove (something) from a surface 

  • To ricochet. 

  • To hasten along with superficial attention. 

  • To become coated over. 

  • To clear a liquid from (scum or substance floating or lying on it), especially the cream that floats on top of fresh milk. 

  • To pass lightly; to glide along in an even, smooth course; to glide along near the surface. 

  • To put on a finishing coat of plaster. 

  • To clear (a liquid) from scum or substance floating or lying on it, by means of a utensil that passes just beneath the surface. 

  • To steal money from a business before the transaction has been recorded, thus avoiding detection. 

adj
  • Having lowered fat content. 

How often have the words pluck and skim occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )