skew
[skyoo]
- to turn aside or swerve; take an oblique course.
- to look obliquely; squint.
Show More
- to give an oblique direction to; shape, form, or cut obliquely.
- Slang. to make conform to a specific concept, attitude, or planned result; slant: The television show is skewed to the young teenager.
- to distort; depict unfairly.
Show More
- having an oblique direction or position; slanting.
- having a part that deviates from a straight line, right angle, etc.: skew gearing.
- Mathematics. (of a dyad or dyadic) equal to the negative of its conjugate.
- (of an arch, bridge, etc.) having the centerline of its opening forming an oblique angle with the direction in which its spanning structure is built.
- Statistics. (of a distribution) having skewness.
Show More
- an oblique movement, direction, or position.
- Also called skew chisel. a wood chisel having a cutting edge set obliquely.
Show More
Origin of skew
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
bias, misrepresent, alter, slant, doctor, color, curve, contort, twist, warp, fake, fudge, falsify, change, bend, misshapeExamples from the Web for skew
Contemporary Examples
In Scotland, hourly wage inequality matches the rest of the United Kingdom once the skew of London is factored out.
Other colleges took more overt actions to skew their Clery Act numbers.
There are a number of inadvertent and purposeful ways for universities to skew their Clery Act numbers.
Using capital gains but not government income would tend to skew the results toward the wealthy.
I think we skew a little younger than some of the other shows.
Historical Examples
Thus we have squire from escuyer (êcuyer), skew from Old Fr.
The Romance of Words (4th ed.)Ernest Weekley
The arch is skew or oblique; and the gate is double, like those of Volterra and Cosa.
The Story of PerugiaMargaret Symonds
If it is more than a quarter of an inch it should be sized and then removed by the skew.
Advanced Toy Making for SchoolsDavid M. Mitchell
The window, in the skew side of the room, had shabby red curtains.
Z. MarcasHonore de Balzac
I entreat you to give me permission to skew your ten stanzas to the abbe.
The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, Vol. I (of VI), "Venetian Years"Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
skew
- placed in or turning into an oblique position or course
- machinery having a component that is at an angle to the main axis of an assembly or is in some other way asymmetricala skew bevel gear
- maths
- composed of or being elements that are neither parallel nor intersecting as, for example, two lines not lying in the same plane in a three-dimensional space
- (of a curve) not lying in a plane
- (of a statistical distribution) not having equal probabilities above and below the mean; non-normal
- distorted or biased
Show More
- an oblique, slanting, or indirect course or position
- psychol the system of relationships in a family in which one parent is extremely dominating while the other parent tends to be meekly compliant
Show More
- to take or cause to take an oblique course or direction
- (intr) to look sideways; squint
- (tr) to place at an angle
- (tr) to distort or bias
Show More
Word Origin
C14: from Old Norman French escuer to shun, of Germanic origin; compare Middle Dutch schuwen to avoid
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for skew
v.
late 15c., "to turn aside" (intransitive), from Old North French eskiuer "shy away from, avoid," Old French eschiver (see eschew). Transitive sense of "turn (something) aside" is from 1570s. Meaning "depict unfairly" first recorded 1872, on notion of being "give oblique direction to," hence "to distort, to make slant." Statistical sense dates from 1929. Related: Skewed; skewing. The adjectival meaning "slanting, turned to one side" is recorded from c.1600, from the verb; noun meaning "slant, deviation" first attested 1680s.
Show More
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
skew
[skyōō]
- A transformation of coordinates in which one coordinate is displaced in one direction in proportion to its distance from a coordinate plane or axis. A rectangle, for example, that undergoes skew is transformed into a parallelogram. Also called shear
Show More
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.