screw

Meanings

Noun

• A device that has a helical function.
• The motion of screwing something; a turn or twist to one side.
• A prison guard.
• An extortioner; a sharp bargainer; a skinflint.
• An instructor who examines with great or unnecessary severity; also, a searching or strict examination of a student by an instructor.
• Sexual intercourse; the act of screwing.
• A casual sexual partner.
• Salary, wages.
• Backspin.
• A small packet of tobacco.
• An old, worn-out, unsound and worthless horse.
• A straight line in space with which a definite linear magnitude termed the pitch is associated. It is used to express the displacement of a rigid body, which may always be made to consist of a rotation about an axis combined with a translation parallel to that axis.
• An amphipod crustacean.
• Rheumatism.

Verb

• To connect or assemble pieces using a screw.
• To have sexual intercourse with.
• To cheat someone or ruin their chances in a game or other situation.
• To extort or practice extortion upon; to oppress by unreasonable or extortionate exactions; to put the screws on.
• To contort.
• To miskick (a ball) by hitting it with the wrong part of the foot.
• To screw back.
• To examine (a student) rigidly; to subject to a severe examination.

Related

Opposite words

• unscrew

Origin

• , which probably influenced or conflated with the aforementioned, resulting in the Middle English word.
• Old French escroue (whence Medieval Latin scrofa ("nut, screwhole")), is believed to be an adaptation of Latin scrōfa ("sow, female pig"); but this development is not found in other Romance languages. (For change in meaning, compare also Spanish puerca, Portuguese porca, both ‘sow; screw nut’, and is based on the fact that a boar's penis has a screw-like tip, making the sow's vulva equivalent to a screw nut by analogy).
• Old Dutch *scrūva possibly derives from Proto-Germanic *skrūbō ("screw"), from *skru-, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)keru-, *(s)ker-, and is related to German Schraube ("screw"), Low German schruve, schruwe, Dutch schroef ("screw"), West Frisian skroef ("screw"), Danish skrue ("screw"), Swedish skruv ("screw, peg"), Icelandic skrúfa ("screw").
• Compare also Occitan escrofa ("screw nut"), Calabrese scrufina, which may be borrowings of the Old French word, or parallel developments.