skew vs twist

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. 

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. 

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. 

twist

noun
  • A twisting force. 

  • A sliver of lemon peel added to a cocktail, etc. 

  • A distortion to the meaning of a word or passage. 

  • A sudden bend (or short series of bends) in a road, path, etc. 

  • The form given in twisting. 

  • An unexpected turn in a story, tale, etc. 

  • A roll or baton of baked dough or pastry in a twisted shape. 

  • The spiral course of the rifling of a gun barrel or a cannon. 

  • A type of dance characterised by rotating one’s hips. See Twist (dance) on Wikipedia for more details. 

  • A strong individual tendency or bent; inclination. 

  • The degree of stress or strain when twisted. 

  • Anything twisted, or the act of twisting. 

  • A small roll of tobacco. 

  • A sprain, especially to the ankle. 

  • A girl, a woman. 

  • A material for gun barrels, consisting of iron and steel twisted and welded together. 

  • A type of thread made from two filaments twisted together. 

  • A rotation of the body when diving. 

verb
  • To turn the ends of something, usually thread, rope etc., in opposite directions, often using force. 

  • To wreathe; to wind; to encircle; to unite by intertexture of parts. 

  • To distort or change the truth or meaning of words when repeating. 

  • In the game of blackjack (pontoon or twenty-one), to be dealt another card. 

  • To turn a knob etc. 

  • To join together by twining one part around another. 

  • To wind into; to insinuate. 

  • To form a twist (in any of the above noun meanings). 

  • To wind; to follow a bendy or wavy course; to have many bends. 

  • To injure (a body part) by bending it in the wrong direction. 

  • To cause to rotate. 

  • To contort; to writhe; to complicate; to crook spirally; to convolve. 

  • To coax. 

  • To dance the twist (a type of dance characterised by twisting one's hips). 

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