knockdown vs skew

knockdown

noun
  • a short pass played downwards, for example from the head onto someone's feet. 

  • The condition of a sailboat being pushed abruptly to horizontal, with the mast parallel to the water surface. 

  • An act of knocking down or the condition of being knocked down. 

  • A shelter erected for use as a temporary dressing room. 

  • A collection of parts required to assemble a product, typically manufactured in one region and exported elsewhere for assembly. 

  • A genetically modified organism that carries one or more genes in its chromosomes that have been made less active or had their expression reduced. 

  • The use of a reagent such as an oligonucleotide with sequence complementary to an active gene or its mRNA transcript, to interfere with the expression of said gene. 

  • An overwhelming blow. 

verb
  • To employ the knockdown technique 

adj
  • To be formed into a head by upsetting in fastening. 

  • reduced in price, originally to a price below which an article would not be sold by the auctioneer 

  • powerful enough to overwhelm or knock down 

  • Capable of being taken apart for packing or removal. 

skew

noun
  • An oblique or sideways movement. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

adv
  • Askew, obliquely; awry. 

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. 

verb
  • 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 hurl or throw. 

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

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