Scythn.

a1387 J. Trevisa tr. R. Higden Polychron. (St. John's Cambr.) (1869) II. 257 Of Egipcians in þe souþ, and of Sithes [MS. a Schytes; Caxton, Shites] in the norþ.

1480 W. Caxton Descr. Scotl. (1520) 1/1 Scottes ben called as it were scyttes for they came out of Scicia.

1557 T. North tr. A. de Guevara Diall Princes (1619) 707/1 The Greekes the Romaines,..the Scythes were alwayes temperat in eating and drinking.

a1599 E. Spenser View State Ireland 39 in J. Ware Two Hist. Ireland (1633) The old English also which there remayneth, have gotten up their cryes Scythian-like... And here also lyeth open an other manifest proofe, that the Irish bee Scythes or Scots.

1871 P. Smith Anc. Hist. East xxiii. §12. 473 The Sacæ of Greek writers on Persian affairs are simply Asiatic Scyths.

1914 D. G. Hogarth Anc. East iii. 122 The predatory Scyth..probably lacked skill to inscribe them.

1950 H. L. Lorimer Homer & Monuments v. 286 The conflict between Kimmerian and Scyth in South Russia.

1964 Listener 6 Feb. 238/2 So we came to the plain and the Scyths.

1973 R. L. Fox Alexander the Great iv. 75 The barbarian Scyths and Thracians.

1972 B. Thomson Premature Revol. i. vii. 130 The ‘Scyths’ revived the old Slavophile faith in the Russian peasantry, as a bastion of spiritual values in an age of materialism... Usually the ‘Scyths’ were concerned with purely Russian questions, but Blok's poem The Scyths (Skify, 1918) reveals a chauvinistic and aggressive side to the movement.