Word of the Day

: September 29, 2015

askew

adjective uh-SKYOO

What It Means

: out of line : awry

askew in Context

He said he was fine but he looked as if he'd been in a fight: his hair and clothes were disheveled and his glasses were askew on the bridge of his nose.

"Even so, the impact of the collision damaged the interior wall of the building and sent post office boxes askew." — Jon Johnson, The Eastern Arizona Courier (Safford, Arizona), 17 Aug. 2015

Did You Know?

It's believed that askew was formed simply by attaching the prefix a- (meaning, among other things, "in (such) a state or condition") to skew. The word skew, which derives via Middle English from Anglo-French eschiver, meaning "to escape or avoid," can be a verb, adjective, or noun. But at the time of the first appearance of askew in English, in the middle of the 16th century, skew had only been established as a verb meaning "to take an oblique course or direction." At least one etymologist has suggested that askew might have been influenced by an Old Norse phrase, and that the same phrase might have also given us askance. In the past, askew was used synonymously with askance, as in "She looked at me askew after my ill-timed joke."