Skerry

A skerry is a small rocky island, usually defined to be too small for habitation; it may simply be a rocky reef. A skerry can also be called a low sea stack.

The term skerry is derived from the Old Norse sker, which means a rock in the sea. The Old Norse term sker was brought into the English language via the Scots language word spelled skerrie or skerry. It is a cognate of the Scandinavian languages' words for skerry – Icelandic, Faroese:sker, Danish:skær, Swedish:skär, Norwegian:skjær / skjer, found also in German:Schäre, Finnish:kari, Estonian:skäär, Latvian:šēra, Lithuanian:Šcheras and Russian:шхеры(shkhery). In Scottish Gaelic, it appears as sgeir, e.g. Sula Sgeir, in Irish as sceir, in Welsh as sgeri, and in Manx as skeyr.