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skewer

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

From Middle English skeuier, skuer, likely a variant of Middle English *skever, *skiver (compare Modern English skiver), probably of North Germanic origin, compare Icelandic skífa (“to slice”), Norwegian skive, Swedish skiva, Swedish skifer (“a slate”).

Noun

skewer (plural skewers)

a b c d e f g h
88
7{{{square}}} black queen{{{square}}} black king7
66
5{{{square}}} black bishop5
4{{{square}}} white king{{{square}}} white rook4
3{{{square}}} white queen3
22
11
a b c d e f g h
The white king is skewered by the black bishop, since after it moves out of check, the bishop can capture the white queen.
  1. A long pin, normally made of metal or wood, used to secure food during cooking.
    • 1951 November, 'Pausanias', “To Greece by the "Simplon-Orient Express"”, in Railway Magazine, page 731:
      Larissa, 107 miles from Salonica, is reached at 10.33, and there is a halt of 17 min. while vendors of oranges, cheese, meat on skewers, sweetmeats, and Turkish coffee do a brisk trade.
  2. Food served on a skewer. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
  3. (chess) A scenario in which a piece attacks a more valuable piece which, if it moves aside, reveals a less valuable piece.
    Hyponyms: absolute skewer, relative skewer
    Coordinate term: pin
Synonyms
Derived terms
Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb

skewer (third-person singular simple present skewers, present participle skewering, simple past and past participle skewered)

  1. To impale on a skewer.
  2. (chess) To attack a piece which has a less valuable piece behind it.
  3. (figurative) To severely mock or discredit.
    • 2014 June 26, A. A. Dowd, “Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler Spoof Rom-com Clichés in They Came Together”, in The A.V. Club‎, archived from the original on 7 December 2017:
      Parody, in its purest form, is an act of both mockery and appreciation. True masters of the practice possess a bone-deep understanding of their targets; they skewer because they love—or at least, because they’ve done their homework.
    • 2022 January 13, Mark Landler, “U.K. Monarchy and Government Plunge Into Simultaneous Crises”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN, image caption:
      A journalist outside 10 Downing Street on Thursday displaying one of the many tabloid covers skewering Mr. Johnson.
    • 2025 February 26, Roy Rivenburg, “Nellie Bowles of The Free Press punctures pretension left and right”, in The Christian Science Monitor:
      As resident jester at the maverick journalism outlet The Free Press, Nellie Bowles scours the news for the absurd and hypocritical, and then skewers the best of the worst in her column, TGIF.
Translations

Etymology 2

From skew +‎ -er.

Noun

skewer (plural skewers)

  1. (rare) That which skews something.

Adjective

skewer

  1. comparative form of skew: more skew

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