skew
/skju/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.01 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "When making this joint it is important to see that the eccentric or crank is at dead-centre; if it is at the end or limit of its stroke, the rubber is skewed the full length of same; if it is at the centre, the skewing, which is the cause of wear, is halved."
- "Thus asynchronous torques cannot be avoided but can be reduced by proper choice of coil span and by skewing the stator or rotor slots."
- "Skewing an object, as we mention at the start of this section, involves distorting the angles of the object. For example, you can create a parallelogram by skewing a square, or you can create shadow effects with skewed text (which we show you later in this chapter)."
- "The easiest way to skew objects is to use the Free Transform tool. [...] Use the left box to skew horizontally. To skew clockwise, click the current value and then either type a value between 1 and 89 or drag up. To skew counterclockwise, click the current value and then either type a value between −1 and −89 or drag down. Then press Enter or Return."
- "We have looked at the obese and anorexic communities, whose conditions fall on a curve skewed towards overweight for determining the social norm of body weight and who face a golden-mean social ideal of body weight."
- "A disproportionate number of female subjects in the study group skewed the results."
Etymology
The verb is derived from Middle English skeuen, skewe, skewen (“to run at an angle or obliquely; to escape”), from Old Northern French escuer [and other forms], variants of Old French eschuer, eschever, eschiver (“to escape, flee; to avoid”) (modern French esquiver (“to dodge (a blow), duck; to elude, evade; to slip away; to sidestep”)), from Frankish *skiuhan (“to dread; to avoid, shun”), from Proto-Germanic *skiuhijaną (“to frighten”). The English word is cognate with Catalan esquiu (“evasive, shy”), Danish skæv (“crooked, slanting; skew, wry”) (> Norwegian Bokmål skjev), Dutch scheef (“crooked, slanting”), Norwegian skeiv (“crooked, lopsided; oblique, slanting; distorted”), Saterland Frisian skeeuw (“aslant, slanting; oblique; awry”), and is a doublet of eschew. The adjective and adverb are probably derived from the verb and/or from askew, and the noun is derived from either the adjective or the verb.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: skeuen, escuer, eschuer, *skiuhan, *skiuhijaną, *(s)kewH-
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /skju/
- British English: /skjuː/
Usage
Inflected Forms
skews (present, singular)
skewing (participle, present)
skewed (participle, past)
skewed (past)
skewer (comparative)
more skew (comparative)
skewest (superlative)
most skew (superlative)
skews (plural)