You're most likely to see a skyscraper in a large city like New York or Hong Kong. You can spot the tourists in these cities because they are often gazing up at the tops of the skyscrapers. The designation of a building as a skyscraper was originally an Americanism, but the earliest recorded use of skyscraper was for a triangular sail set topmost on a square-rigged ship, and at other times in the past the word was used to designate a very tall man and a high-flying bird, among other things.