skewer

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈskjuː.ə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈskjuː.ɚ/
• Rhymes: -uːə(ɹ)

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”).

skewer (plural skewers)

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

• quick release skewer

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^[1], 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^[2], →ISSN, image caption:

     A journalist outside 10 Downing Street on Thursday displaying one of the many tabloid covers skewering Mr. Johnson.

From skew +‎ -er.

skewer (plural skewers)

1. (rare) That which skews something.

skewer

1. comparative form of skew: more skew

• krewes, reskew, werkes, Wesker