From an earlier verb *skelt with ablaut of the stem vowel, from Proto-Baltic *skel-, from Proto-Indo-European *skel-, from *kelh₁- (“to call, to shout, to make noise, to sound”) with an extra s-mobile. The rarely attested sense of “easy to chop” comes from an unrelated, homophonous adjective mostly lost in the standard language; cf. skaldīt (“to chop”). Cognates include Lithuanian skalùs (“sonorous; loud; such that it (dog) barks often”), Lithuanian skãlyti (“to bark; to roar, to yell; to whine”) (considered by some a borrowing from Polish), Russian скули́ть (skulítʹ, “to whine”), Czech skoliti (“to bark repeatedly”), Polish skolić (“to whine”), Old Norse skjalla (“to sound, to ring, to hit noisily”), skella (“to make noise, to scold, to quarrel, to laugh noisily”), skjallr (“loud”), skal (“noise”), Old High German scellan, German schallen (“to sound”).