Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

skew

UK /skjuː/ · US /skju/ verb, adjective, adverb, noun

Forms skews skewing skewed skewer skewest

  1. verb (transitive) To form or shape in an oblique way; to cause to take an oblique position.
  2. verb (statistics) To cause (a distribution) to be asymmetrical.
  3. verb (transitive) To bias or distort in a particular direction. “A disproportionate number of female subjects in the study group skewed the results.”
  4. verb (transitive, Northumbria, Yorkshire) To hurl or throw.
  5. verb (intransitive) To move obliquely; to move sideways, to sidle; to lie obliquely.
  6. verb (intransitive) To jump back or sideways in fear or surprise; to shy, as a horse.
  7. verb (intransitive) To look at obliquely; to squint; hence, to look slightingly or suspiciously.
  8. adjective (not comparable) Neither parallel nor perpendicular to a certain line; askew. “a skew arch”
  9. adjective (not comparable, geometry) Of two lines in three-dimensional space: neither intersecting nor parallel.
  10. adjective (comparable, statistics) Of a distribution: asymmetrical about its mean.
  11. adverb (rare) Askew, obliquely; awry.
  12. noun Something that has an oblique or slanted position.
  13. noun An oblique or sideways movement.
  14. noun A squint or sidelong glance.
  15. noun A kind of wooden vane or cowl in a chimney which revolves according to the direction of the wind and prevents smoking.
  16. noun 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.
  17. noun A bias or distortion in a particular direction.
  18. noun (electronics) A phenomenon in synchronous digital circuit systems (such as computers) in which the same sourced clock signal arrives at different components at different times.
  19. noun (statistics) A state of asymmetry in a distribution; skewness.
  20. noun (architecture) A stone at the foot of the slope of a gable, the offset of a buttress, etc., cut with a sloping surface and with a check to receive the coping stones and retain them in place; a skew-corbel.

Synonyms

color bung cast chuck chunk cook dash dump feck fling jerk heave hield hoy huck hurl hurtle launch lob peck skewed

Antonyms

unskew align

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.

From Middle English skeu, skew (“stone with a sloping surface forming the slope of a gable, offset of a buttress, etc.”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman eschu, escuwe, eskeu, or Old Northern French eschieu, eskieu, eskiu, from Old French escu, escut, eschif (“a shield”) (modern French écu), from Latin scūtum (“a shield”), from Proto-Indo-European *skewH- (“to cover, protect”) or *skey- (“to cut, split”).

Perhaps from a Cornish word, though the closest Cornish word is kuas/cwas, which would require much phonological modification; thus, perhaps instead simply from the skewed angle wind may drive such rain to fall in.

Webster’s 1913

  1. adverb Awry; obliquely; askew.
  2. adjective Turned or twisted to one side; situated obliquely; skewed; --chiefly used in technical phrases. Skew arch, an oblique arch. See under Oblique.
  3. noun A stone at the foot of the slope of a gable, the offset of a buttress, or the like, cut with a sloping surface and with a check to receive the coping stones and retain them in place.
  4. verb To walk obliquely; to go sidling; to lie or move obliquely.

Etymology [Cf. D. scheef. Dan. ski, Sw. skef, Icel. skeifr, G. schief, also E. shy, a. & v. i.]

Etymology [See Skew, adv.]

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “skew”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details