skewer
verbEtymology From Middle English skeuier, skuer, likely a variant of Middle English *skever, *skiver (compare Modern English skiver), probably of North Germanic origin, compare Icelandic skífa (“to slice”), Norwegian skive, Swedish skiva, Swedish skifer (“a slate”).
1
To impale on a skewer.
2
Board games, Chess, Games To attack a piece which has a less valuable piece behind it.
3
Figuratively To severely mock or discredit.
- Parody, in its purest form, is an act of both mockery and appreciation. True masters of the practice possess a bone-deep understanding of their targets; they skewer because they love—or at least, because they’ve done their homework.2014 June 26, A. A. Dowd, “Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler Spoof Rom-com Clichés in They Came Together”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 07 Dec 2017:
- A journalist outside 10 Downing Street on Thursday displaying one of the many tabloid covers skewering Mr. Johnson.2022 January 13, Mark Landler, “U.K. Monarchy and Government Plunge Into Simultaneous Crises”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, image caption:
1 more example
- As resident jester at the maverick journalism outlet The Free Press, Nellie Bowles scours the news for the absurd and hypocritical, and then skewers the best of the worst in her column, TGIF.2025 February 26, Roy Rivenburg, “Nellie Bowles of The Free Press punctures pretension left and right”, in The Christian Science Monitor:
- Derived terms
- skewerable, skewerer, unskewered