Etymograph

English

skew

Skew comes from Middle English skeuen ‘to run at an angle or obliquely’, and goes back to Old French eschuer ‘to escape, flee’.

  1. Old Frenchc. 842–1400eschuer‘to escape, flee’
  2. Old Northern Frenchc. 842–1400escuer
  3. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500skeuen‘to run at an angle or obliquely’
  4. Englishearliest quotation c. 1616–1619skew

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed

Lineage

  1. Old Frenchc. 842–1400eschuer‘to escape, flee’
  2. Old Northern Frenchc. 842–1400escuer
  3. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500skeuen‘to run at an angle or obliquely’
  4. Englishearliest quotation c. 1616–1619skew

Earliest quotation: c. 1616–1619, The Loyal Subiect: “[C]an this durt draw us / To ſuch a…”

The story

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.

Every English word from Old French eschuer

Another origin of skew

  1. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*skewH-‘to cover, protect’reconstructed
  2. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEscūtum‘a shield’
  3. Old Frenchc. 842–1400escu
  4. Anglo-Normanc. 1066–1400eschuuncertain
  5. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500skeu‘stone with a sloping surface forming the slope of a gable, offset of a buttress, etc’
  6. Englishtodayskew

Today it means

verb To form or shape in an oblique way; to cause to take an oblique position.

Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.

Etymograph / Old French eschuer / skew

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