beak vs skew

beak

verb
  • To play truant. 

  • Seize with the beak. 

  • Strike with the beak. 

noun
  • Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Libythea, notable for the beak-like elongation on their heads. 

  • A schoolmaster (originally, at Eton). 

  • The human nose, especially one that is large and pointed. 

  • That part of a ship, before the forecastle, which is fastened to the stem, and supported by the main knee. 

  • A rigid structure projecting from the front of a bird's face, used for pecking, grooming, foraging, carrying items, eating food, etc. 

  • A similar structure forming the jaws of an octopus, turtle, etc. 

  • A justice of the peace; a magistrate. 

  • The upper or projecting part of the shell, near the hinge of a bivalve. 

  • The prolongation of certain univalve shells containing the canal. 

  • The long projecting sucking mouth of some insects and other invertebrates, as in the Hemiptera. 

  • A toe clip. 

  • A beam, shod or armed at the end with a metal head or point, and projecting from the prow of an ancient galley, used as a ram to pierce the vessel of an enemy; a beakhead. 

  • cocaine. 

  • Any process somewhat like the beak of a bird, terminating the fruit or other parts of a plant. 

  • Anything projecting or ending in a point like a beak, such as a promontory of land. 

  • A continuous slight projection ending in an arris or narrow fillet; that part of a drip from which the water is thrown off. 

skew

verb
  • To hurl or throw. 

  • To look at obliquely; to squint; hence, to look slightingly or suspiciously. 

  • To cause (a distribution) to be asymmetrical. 

  • To bias or distort in a particular direction. 

  • To move obliquely; to move sideways, to sidle; to lie obliquely. 

  • To jump back or sideways in fear or surprise; to shy, as a horse. 

  • To form or shape in an oblique way; to cause to take an oblique position. 

noun
  • A squint or sidelong glance. 

  • A state of asymmetry in a distribution; skewness. 

  • The coping of a gable. 

  • A phenomenon in synchronous digital circuit systems (such as computers) in which the same sourced clock signal arrives at different components at different times. 

  • Something that has an oblique or slanted position. 

  • A kind of wooden vane or cowl in a chimney which revolves according to the direction of the wind and prevents smoking. 

  • An oblique or sideways movement. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • A bias or distortion in a particular direction. 

adj
  • Of a distribution: asymmetrical about its mean. 

  • Neither parallel nor perpendicular to a certain line; askew. 

  • Of two lines in three-dimensional space: neither intersecting nor parallel. 

adv
  • Askew, obliquely; awry. 

How often have the words beak and skew occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )