Skewed

How to spell skewed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce skewed

What does skewed mean?

1. adjectiveDistorted, biased, or set at a slant rather than straight or balanced.
2. verbPast tense of skew: distorted a result or made something slant to one side.

Skewed in a sentence

• adjective

  The survey gave a skewed picture because only loyal customers replied.

• verb

  One extreme outlier skewed the average upward by a wide margin.

• adjective

  The picture frame looked skewed until he straightened it on the wall.

• verb

  Heavy advertising skewed public opinion before the vote.

Where does skewed come from?

Language of origin: French

The base word skew entered English around 1400 with the sense 'to turn aside' or 'to move at a slant'. It came from Old North French eskiwer, meaning 'to shun or avoid', a regional variant of Old French eschiver, which carried the same idea of dodging out of the way. That French verb was itself built on a Germanic root, the same family that gave English the word eschew, so to skew something and to eschew something share a distant ancestor in the notion of sidestepping. Over the centuries the physical sense of slanting or setting at an angle broadened into the figurative sense of distorting or biasing a result. The spelled form skewed simply adds the regular -ed ending; the silent visual trap is the 'ew' cluster, since the word sounds like 'skyood' yet keeps the older Norman-French spelling.

How the word is built

• skew (to turn aside, slant)
• -ed (past tense/adjectival suffix)