Big Ass Advice 3: What does skewiff mean?

Many Big Ass readers come here looking for one thing:

Skewiff

What does "skewiff" mean?

I had an 'aha' moment in a post from a while back titled "Surprise: 'skewiff' is a real word":

I had a weird moment today when morning editor Ruth used the word "skewiff". I had only ever, ever, ever heard that word used by Amanda and her family. I thought it was one of those in-a-family funny mispronounced words that gets passed down through the generations.

But no! Ruth uses it too. The connection is their families' British ancestry, I guess.

I find "skewiff" in the Online Dictionary of Playground Slang, defined as "awry; out of alignment".

The Wordniks have a couple of contextual examples of "skewiff":

25 Feb 2009 02: 17 pm understand how badly they are being out-maneuvered and how skewiff their compass is: — The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Except thanks to social media we can be pretty certain that the facts were a bit skewiff ... at least one guest, Stephen Fry, wasn't there. his immense stream of Twitter updates (40 in the last 24 hours alone) will know that he's been travelling back to the UK from Madagascar where he's been doing some filming. — Technology news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk

And even the Urban Dictionary has a definition of skewiff:

Adjective, describing a thing, person or situation that is broken, in error, messed up, misunderstood.

One more link to a Twitter member named skewiff.

And to wrap, the most common use of "skewiff" in my life has to do with my shoes. Amandas's always telling me my shoes are all skewiff ... meaning the laces are undone or my pant cuff is caught in the tongue of my shoes or something.

There you go. You're now educated about using the word skewiff. Use it wisely.

Comments

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