Skimmed

Skimmed is the past tense and past participle of skim. It is used as a verb to mean moving quickly and superficially over or through something, or to remove the top layer from a liquid or surface. It also functions as an adjective in some varieties of English to describe milk from which most of the fat has been removed.

In dairy contexts, skimmed milk (British English) or skim milk (American English) contains little to no fat, typically about 0.1 to 0.5 percent by weight. The term reflects the traditional practice of removing the cream from the surface of milk to produce a lower-fat product.

In reading and study, to skim means to read quickly in order to get the main ideas or locate specific information, rather than to read every word. A person who has skimmed a document has examined it superficially rather than in full.

Other uses of skimmed include the notion of removing a thin layer from a surface or material, such as skimming the top film from a liquid or lightly scraping a surface to achieve a smoother finish. The word retains the core sense of touching lightly or removing an upper layer, whether applied to liquids, surfaces, or the act of reading.

See also: skim, skim milk, skim reading.