Word: skew Part of Speech: noun 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. Pronunciation: /skjuː/, /skjʉw/, /skju/ 1. Something that has an oblique or slanted position. 2. An oblique or sideways movement. 3. A squint or sidelong glance. 4. A kind of wooden vane or cowl in a chimney which revolves according to the direction of the wind and prevents smoking. 5. 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. 6. A bias or distortion in a particular direction. Example: 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. Example: 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.) 7. A phenomenon in synchronous digital circuit systems (such as computers) in which the same sourced clock signal arrives at different components at different times. Example: 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. Example: 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. 8. A state of asymmetry in a distribution; skewness. Example: 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. Example: 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.