Meaning of Skew | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Something that has an oblique or slanted position.
2. 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.
3. A thick drizzling rain or driving mist.
   Cornwall
4. An oblique or sideways movement.
5. The coping of a gable.
   Scotland
6. A squint or sidelong glance.
7. One of the stones placed over the end of a gable, or forming the coping of a gable.
   obsolete
8. A kind of wooden vane or cowl in a chimney which revolves according to the direction of the wind and prevents smoking.
9. 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.
10. A bias or distortion in a particular direction.
11. A phenomenon in synchronous digital circuit systems (such as computers) in which the same sourced clock signal arrives at different components at different times.
12. A state of asymmetry in a distribution; skewness.

Equivalents

Examples

“We now come to Whiston village and bridge, (7½ miles) and after passing under a wooden bridge, dash under one of 47 feet span, of stone and brick, with a remarkable skew.”

“Thus one of the many skews in the Harleian Catalogue was set straight. (Don't let any one abuse the first Cataloguer of a Collection for skews. For all Catalogues (as for all Indexes) one ought to be grateful: for those without mistakes, most grateful.)”

“The angle of skew, or obliquity, is the angle which the axis of the archway, A A, makes with a perpendicular to the face of the arch, B C A B. The span of the archway, "on the square," as it is called (that is, the perpendicular distance between the abutments), is less than the span on the skew, or parallel to the face of the arch, in the ratio of the cosine of the obliquity to unity. It is the span on the skew which is equal to that of the corresponding symmetrical arch.”

“The mean skew of the core to the base is 1′ 33″, and its mean azimuth - 5′ 16″ to true North.”

“It is apparent that by shifting the position of the hitching link the angle of skew may be increased or diminished as the conditions require. When dragging immediately over ruts or down the center of the road after the sides have been dragged, it is usually preferable to have the hitching link at the center of the chain and to run the drag without skew.”

“One application for which an optical filter can play an important role is that of a wideband connection with low time skew. [...] One signal, the clock, needs to be distributed to all parts of a digital circuit to synchronize its action. The necessarily long path results in the danger of the clock signal arriving at the wrong time (clock skew), limiting the maximum frequency at which the circuit may be clocked.”

“Until recently, there has been a great reluctance to alter the clock network and attempt a nonzero-skew solution. However, recently, an increasing number of designers have been willing to utilize skews for performance enhancement.”

“Skewness (skew) is the degree to which a distribution's shape departs from symmetry [...]. The greater the departure, the greater the skew. Symmetric distributions have no skew. For instance, the normal distribution is symmetric and is thus not a skewed distribution.”

“Skew is the contour, or the unevenness, in a distribution, the dent in the bell curve. A negative skew suggests that the left half of the normal distribution (the left side of the mean) is twisted in such a way that the prospect of achieving negative returns is superior to that of achieving large positive returns. [...] When dealing with skew, traders strive to resolve how frequently in the trading time horizon they will obtain negative returns rather than positive returns. A skew demonstrates the relationship between the movement of an underlying asset and its volatility.”

“How many yards of roofing and serking, in a Roof 45 feet, 8 in. long, from skew to skew; and 21 feet, 8 in. deep, from ridge to easing, including 9 inches for wall plates or double eave?”

“Skew, Skew-table: the term skew is still used in the north for a stone built into the bottom of a gable or other similar situation to support the coping above [...]”

“Gable Copings or Skews are of various forms of section, the most common varieties being the parallel sided, Fig. 654; the weathered, or feather-edged, Fig. 655; and the saddle-backed, Fig. 656. [...] The skews at the eaves terminate in what is termed a club-skew or skew-corbel. This admits of an infinite variety of forms, according to the style of the building, but the object is the same in all—namely, to afford a support and abutment to the skew.”

“The architecture of the steadings given in Plates I. to IX. is of the simplest description—plain rubble-work, with broached ashlar corners, rebates, lintels, and skews, and the roofs extending in stretches, and terminating in gables, without points to be affected by the weather. [...] A somewhat more ornamental style is given in Plate XV. of the farm-steading at Coleshill, in Berkshire, the corners and rebates being in raised work, and the skews of the gables ridged and pinnacled.”

“[page xxviii] Here ensuithe an abstracte of the freemasons worke. [...] It'm, the walle new made on the west syde of the watergate [...] a bottres made wᵗ harde asheler of Kent, l. foot, and in Cane asheler a skew vj. foot, [...] [page xxix] It'm, at the Juell Hows door, iij. spaces covered wᵗ skew and crest, amontying xxxvj. fote of stone.”

“Skew and crest: this phrase, which occurs in the specifications for the repairs at the Tower of London, (23 H. VIII.,) plainly describes the common coping of a wall which consists of a sloping or skew surface surmounted by a roll moulding by way of crest; sometimes there are two skews, separated by a set-off.”

“I am in a regular Cornish skew as to the future, like that thou and I were favoured with when we astonished the natives at Sidmouth - can't see an inch before me.”

“... the only bit of lewth I had When it came to a skew was a high bunch of kekezza, that' pon a gurgey grew.”

“then we walked on along the edge of the rain forest, through a perpetual Cornish "skew," which wetted every-thing within a quarter of a mile of the falls. We went to the edge of the cliff in two or three places and watched the Devil's cascade rushing head-long over its rocks into the seething caldron[…]”

CEFR level