Screwed

How to spell screwed

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce screwed

What does screwed mean?

1. verbPast tense of screw: fastened, attached, or tightened something by turning a screw or a threaded part.
2. adjectiveInformally, in a hopeless or seriously disadvantaged situation; ruined or cheated.

Screwed in a sentence

• verb

  The electrician screwed the new socket firmly to the wall.

• adjective

  Once the deadline passed with the report unfinished, the whole team was screwed.

• verb

  He screwed the lid back onto the jar after lunch.

• adjective

  The hidden fees meant customers were quietly screwed on every contract.

Where does screwed come from?

Language of origin: French

The base word screw entered English in the 1400s from the Old French escroue, which named the female screw, that is the threaded nut into which a bolt turns. Behind the French form lies the Latin scrofa, literally a 'sow' or female pig, apparently because the animal's curling tail reminded people of a spiral thread. From the noun came a verb meaning to fasten or twist something with a screw, and the past-tense and participle form screwed was made simply by adding -ed. Over the centuries the verb gathered figurative senses, so that being twisted up or wrung out came to suggest being ruined or trapped, which is how the blunt modern slang sense of screwed (in deep trouble) arose. The spelling keeps the awkward initial 'scr' cluster of three consonants, and the silent-feeling 'ew' that sounds like 'oo', both of which make the word easy to fumble.

How the word is built

• screw (from Old French escroue: a threaded fastener or nut)
• -ed (past tense / participle suffix)