skewer
[skyoo-er]
- a long pin of wood or metal for inserting through meat or other food to hold or bind it in cooking.
- any similar pin for fastening or holding an item in place.
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- to fasten with or as if with a skewer.
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Origin of skewer
First recorded in 1670–80; earlier skiver < ?
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
pricktransfixlancespitspearnailstickpinfastenimpaleskewerfixpuncturepenetratespikepiercepunchperforateskivertranspierceExamples from the Web for skewered
Contemporary Examples
As with most things, the British comedy Absolutely Fabulous skewered the absurdity years before its current ubiquity.
He skewered the Bush administration for failing to build adequate power plants in the first year after the fall of the regime.
As for Joe Kaufman, the FrontPage writer who attacked Aboushi, he was skewered last year for his Islamophobia on the Daily Show.
The producers of Downton Abbey, meanwhile, are only too pleased to see the show get skewered.
How can you do that if you know you will be personally judged, skewered, betrayed?
Historical Examples
If M. le Marquis should offer himself to be skewered, as he no doubt will.
ScaramoucheRafael Sabatini
Soames skewered the document on to a number of other papers and hung up his hat.
The Forsyte Saga, Volume III.John Galsworthy
I have been skewered, and you've been nursing me, my pretty maid.
KaterfeltoG. J. Whyte-Melville
Freddy sliced off a throat-plugging lump of beef and skewered it on his fork.
MakersCory Doctorow
Barely had it done so when it was skewered to the boards by the fork of Captain Tollward.
Cupid in AfricaP. C. Wren
skewer
- a long pin for holding meat in position while being cooked, etc
- a similar pin having some other function
- chess a tactical manoeuvre in which an attacked man is made to move and expose another man to capture
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- (tr) to drive a skewer through or fasten with a skewer
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Word Origin
C17: probably from dialect skiver
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 skewered
skewer
n.
1670s, variant of dialectal skiver (1660s), perhaps from a Scandinavian source, cf. Old Norse skifa "a cut, slice" (of bread, etc.), Swedish skifer "a slate," which are related to shiver (n.1) "small piece."
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skewer
v.
1701, from the noun. Related: Skewered; skewering.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper