noun a vagrant, especially of the thuggish sort. Seemingly related to the C17 'skelder', an honorable cant term for 'a professional beggar' which was long obsolete when 'skell' started to show up in New York in the early 1970s. A favourite word of police television dramas in the 1990s; the screeplay by Gardner Stern for episode 2 of season 2 of NYPD Blue that aired in September 1994 was titled For Whom the Skell Rolls US, 1957