it's the practice of "polishing" the record, usually by taking a layer off of the surface. if you look at a polished record, it's clear it's been polished, there are scratches that are clearly the deeper end of the scratch where the top part has been taken out, and the record has an unnatural shine.
anyways, polishing won't fix a skip, but it's not that hard to fix a skip unless there is a scratch parallel to the grooves that is causing it. i think pete s said he could fix skips for you, you might try him.