skew
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /skjuː/
ipa: /skju/
rhymes: -uː
homophone: SKU
Forms: form: skews
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.
Senses: glosses: Something that has an oblique or slanted position.
glosses: An oblique or sideways movement.
glosses: A squint or sidelong glance.
glosses: A kind of wooden vane or cowl in a chimney which revolves according to the direction of the wind and prevents smoking.
glosses: A piece of rock lying in a slanting position and tapering upwards which overhangs a working-place in a mine and is liable to fall.
examples: text: We now come to Whiston village and bridge, (7½ miles) and after passing under a wooden bridge, dash under one of 47 feet span, of stone and brick, with a remarkable skew.
ref: 1832, James Scott Walker, “The Broad-green Embankment”, in An Accurate Description of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, […], 3rd edition, Liverpool: J. F. Cannell, printer, […], →OCLC, page 29:
text: Thus one of the many skews in the Harleian Catalogue was set straight. (Don't let any one abuse the first Cataloguer of a Collection for skews. For all Catalogues (as for all Indexes) one ought to be grateful: for those without mistakes, most grateful.)
ref: 1869, F[rederick] J[ames] Furnivall, “Forewords”, in F. J. Furnivall, editor, Queene Elizabethes Achademy (by Sir Humphrey Gilbert): […] (Early English Text Society Extra Series; VIII), London: N[icholas] Trübner & Co., […], →OCLC, page xvii:
text: The angle of skew, or obliquity, is the angle which the axis of the archway, A A, makes with a perpendicular to the face of the arch, B C A B. The span of the archway, "on the square," as it is called (that is, the perpendicular distance between the abutments), is less than the span on the skew, or parallel to the face of the arch, in the ratio of the cosine of the obliquity to unity. It is the span on the skew which is equal to that of the corresponding symmetrical arch.
ref: 1876, William John Macquorn Rankine, E. F. Bamber, “Of Masonry”, in A Manual of Civil Engineering, 11th edition, London: Charles Griffin and Company, […], →OCLC, part II (Of Materials and Structures), section VIII (Of Stone and Brick Arches), paragraph 295 (Skew Arches), page 429:
text: The mean skew of the core to the base is 1′ 33″, and its mean azimuth - 5′ 16″ to true North.
ref: [1883], W[illiam] M[atthew] Flinders Petrie, “Outside of Great Pyramid”, in The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, London: Field & Tuer, […]; Simpkin, Marshall & Co., […]; Hamilton, Adams & Co., […], →OCLC, paragraph 22, page 41:
text: It is apparent that by shifting the position of the hitching link the angle of skew may be increased or diminished as the conditions require. When dragging immediately over ruts or down the center of the road after the sides have been dragged, it is usually preferable to have the hitching link at the center of the chain and to run the drag without skew.
ref: 1917 March, “How to Use the Drag”, in The Road Drag and How It is Used (United States Department of Agriculture Farmers’ Bulletin; no. 597), Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 7:
glosses: A bias or distortion in a particular direction.
examples: text: One application for which an optical filter can play an important role is that of a wideband connection with low time skew. [...] One signal, the clock, needs to be distributed to all parts of a digital circuit to synchronize its action. The necessarily long path results in the danger of the clock signal arriving at the wrong time (clock skew), limiting the maximum frequency at which the circuit may be clocked.
ref: 1989, Ivan Andonovic, Deepak Uttamchandani, editors, Principles of Modern Optical Systems, volume 1, Norwood, Mass.: Artech House, →ISBN, page 501:
text: Until recently, there has been a great reluctance to alter the clock network and attempt a nonzero-skew solution. However, recently, an increasing number of designers have been willing to utilize skews for performance enhancement.
ref: 2004, Sachin Sapatnekar, “Clocking and Clock Skew Optimization”, in Timing, New York, N.Y.; Boston, Mass.: Kluwer Academic Publishers, →ISBN, section 9.8 (Conclusion), page 205:
topics: business
electrical-engineering
electricity
electromagnetism
electronics
energy
engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
glosses: A phenomenon in synchronous digital circuit systems (such as computers) in which the same sourced clock signal arrives at different components at different times.
examples: text: Skewness (skew) is the degree to which a distribution's shape departs from symmetry [...]. The greater the departure, the greater the skew. Symmetric distributions have no skew. For instance, the normal distribution is symmetric and is thus not a skewed distribution.
ref: 2012, James A. Rosenthal, “Shape of Distribution”, in Statistics and Data Interpretation for Social Work, New York, N.Y.: Springer Publishing Company, →ISBN, section 5.3.1 (Characteristics), page 53:
text: Skew is the contour, or the unevenness, in a distribution, the dent in the bell curve. A negative skew suggests that the left half of the normal distribution (the left side of the mean) is twisted in such a way that the prospect of achieving negative returns is superior to that of achieving large positive returns. [...] When dealing with skew, traders strive to resolve how frequently in the trading time horizon they will obtain negative returns rather than positive returns. A skew demonstrates the relationship between the movement of an underlying asset and its volatility.
ref: 2013, Larry Shover, “Volatility Skew: Smile or Smirk?”, in Trading Options in Turbulent Markets: Master Uncertainty through Active Volatility Management, 2nd edition, Hoboken, N.J.: Bloomberg Press, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 47:
topics: mathematics
sciences
statistics
glosses: A state of asymmetry in a distribution; skewness.
Derived terms: on the skew
skewness