Definition
nounThe main bones of the head considered as a unit; including the cranium, facial bones, and mandible.
nounThese bones as a symbol for death; death's-head.
Sentence Examples
Closer examination revealed that the skull had been crushed by some heavy blow.
The human skull consists of 23 bones.
The boy fell off the bicycle and fractured his skull.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English sculle, scolle (also schulle, scholle), probably from a dialectal form of Old Norse skalli (“bald head, skull”), itself probably related to Old English sċealu (“husk”), to Proto-Norse *ᛋᚲᚨᛚᛟ (*skalo), from Proto-Germanic *skallô; compare Finnish skallo. Compare Scots scull, Danish skal (“skull”) and skalle (“bald head, skull”), Norwegian skalle, Swedish skalle and especially dialectal Swedish skulle.
Related to Old Norse skoltr (“brow”), skolptr (“muzzle, snout”), akin to Icelandic skoltur (“jaw”), dialectal Swedish skult, skulle (“dome, crown of the head, skull”), Norwegian Nynorsk skult, skolt (“cranium, head (of a hammer); crag; hub”), Middle Dutch scolle, scholle, Middle Low German scholle, schulle (“clod, sod”), and Scots skult, skolt. Compare also Old High German sciula, skiula (“skull”). Possibly related to Latin celsus (“lofty, high, tall”), collis (“hill”).
Also related to Old Norse skǫllóttr, Icelandic sköllóttur, Old Swedish skallotter, Swedish skallig, Danish skaldet, Norwegian skallet (“bald”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"All the time six or eight large Chinese gongs were being beaten by the vigorous arms of as many young men, producing such a deafening discord that I was glad to escape to the round house, where I slept very comfortably with half a dozen smoke-dried human skulls suspended over my head."
— 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 110:
"He was about to roar when, lying among the black sticks and straw under the cliff, he saw a whole skull—perhaps a cow's skull, a skull, perhaps, with the teeth in it. Sobbing, but absent-mindedly, he ran farther and farther away until he held the skull in his arms."
— 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC:
"Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made."
— 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Prologue”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC:
"My thoughts are flying around in my skull like fireflies in a jar, but all of a sudden I'm unbearably tired and can't stay awake."
— 2006, Bart Yates, The Brothers Bishop:
"Graduates […] will never forget that majestic stature, that massive brow, that commanding look, as its possessor paced the ante-chapel of his college, or took his seat of presidence among the skulls of Golgotha."
— 1881, The Academy, page 407: