screw – English noun declension

English noun forms of screw

Noun: screw
Singularscrew
Pluralscrews

Sample Sentences

  • It is never possible to settle down to the ordinary routine of life at sea until the screw begins to revolve. There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy. [1915, G[eorge] A. Birmingham [pseudonym; James Owen Hannay], chapter I, in Gossamer, New York, N.Y.: George H. Doran Company, →OCLC, page 01:]
  • The screws moved her out of my cell because they could not stand the idea of a black and white white being together. [1984 April 21, Albert Jones, “White Lovers”, in Gay Community News, page 4:]
  • And that's how it came to pass that on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of forty-nine wound up sitting in a row at ten o'clock in the morning drinking icy cold, Bohemia-style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison. [1994, Frank Darabont, The Shawshank Redemption (film)]
  • They both wedged up in his cell and refused to come out. They were hurling abuse at the screws on the other side of the door. As a result they were both shipped out to another jail the following day. [2000, Reginald Kray, A Way of Life:]
  • This gentleman and the guard seemed to know Sir Pitt very well, and laughed at him a great deal. They both agreed in calling him an old screw; which means a very stingy, avaricious person. [1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 8, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:]
  • Why can't I get just one screw? / Believe me, I'd know what to do / But something won't let me make love to you [1983, Gordon Gano, “Add It Up”, in Violent Femmes, performed by Violent Femmes:]
  • “Not for God's sake, for Papá's sake. He's the one who gave Mami a good screw, and then you popped out. Or did you think you were a child of the Immaculate Conception, like the Baby Jesus? [2001, Bárbara Mujica, Frida: A Novel of Frida Kahlo, Overlook Press, published 2012, →ISBN:]
  • A few couples would let selected doggers join in, with the lucky ones managing to get a screw. [2007, Barry Calvert, Swingers 1, Matador, published 2007, →ISBN, page 85:]
  • As she sucked the nicotine deeply into her lungs, she closed her eyes and leaned back against the headboard, enjoying the pleasurable buzz that the combination of a good screw—well, a decent screw—coupled with the nicotine gave. [2009, Kimberly Kaye Terry, The Sweet Spot, Aphrodisia Books, published 2009, →ISBN, page 28:]
  • If I don't go back to my boy friend he'll be as mad as hell. He's a sulky brute, but Christ, he's a good screw. [1944, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 5, in The Razor’s Edge […], 1st American edition, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., →OCLC, section ii, page 211:]
  • "Swear it!" Kathleen screamed. "Let her know that she's just another screw. Because, darling, that's all you are. So go on, tell her!" [1990, Susan Lewis, Stolen Beginnings, HarperPaperbacks, published 1992, →ISBN, page 122:]
  • She was just a girl, like any of the girls he had had so easily, just another screw. [1993, William Gill, Fortune's Child, HarperCollins Canada, published 1994, →ISBN, page 42:]
  • Mary was Eli's favorite screw because she was clean, pretty, a good mother, funny, and alway was able to make herself available for their twice a week fucks as easily as he was. [2009, Sam Moffie, The Book of Eli, Mill City Press, published 2009, →ISBN, page 6:]
  • “I’ll speak to Mrs. Dorman when she comes back, and see if I can’t come to terms with her,” I said. “Perhaps she wants a rise in her screw. It will be all right. Let’s walk up to the church.” [1887, Edith Nesbit, Man-Size in Marble:]
  • A certain amount of "screw" is as necessary for a man as for a billiard-ball. [1888, Rudyard Kipling, In the Pride of His Youth:]
  • Before potato crisps were sold pre-salted each packet would contain a screw of salt.
  • 3 Screws and a Pipe [1847, Henry Mayhew, The Greatest Plague of Life:]
  • When the opportunity came the blind man smoothed out the screw of paper that the encounter had left in his hand and read as follows: […] [1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries:]
  • […] a gentleman of leisure, who enjoyed himself on a couple of spavined screws […]; both of them, as Stephen said, looked lonely without a gig behind them. [1937, Siegfried Sassoon, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston: Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, London: Faber and Faber, page 155 (Faber Paper 1972 edition):]
  • the skeleton screw (Caprella)
  • the sand screw
  • She didn't like my mother, so she made a wax doll and stuck thorns into its legs, and my mother had the screws (rheumatism) in her legs ever since. [2000, Jacqueline Simpson, Stephen Roud, A Dictionary of English Folklore:]

Etymology

1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *(s)krebʰ-der.?
3. Latin scrōfa
4. Old French escrouebor.
5. ▲
6. Old French escruveinflu.
7. Middle English scrue
8. English screw
9. From Middle English screw, scrue (“screw”); apparently, despite the difference in meaning, from Old French escroue (“nut, cylindrical socket, screwhole”), from Latin scrōfa (“female pig”) through comparison with the corkscrew shape of a pig's penis. There is also the Old French escruve (“screw”), from Old Dutch *scrūva ("screw"; whence Middle Dutch schruyve (“screw”)), which probably influenced or conflated with the aforementioned, resulting in the Middle English word.
10. more on the etymology of screw
11. 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).
12. Old Dutch *scrūva possibly derives from Proto-Germanic *skrūbō (“screw”), from *skru- (“to cut”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)keru-, *(s)ker- (“to cut”), and is related to German Schraube (“screw”), Low German schruve, schruwe (“screw”), Dutch schroef (“screw”), West Frisian skroef (“screw”), Danish skrue (“screw”), Swedish skruv (“screw, peg”), Icelandic skrúfa (“screw”).
13. Compare also Occitan escrofa (“screw nut”), Calabrese scrufina (“screw nut”), which may be borrowings of the Old French word, or parallel developments. See: Latin Nouns 'scrōfa', Latin Nouns 'scrōfa', Spanish Nouns 'puerca', Portuguese Nouns 'porca', German Nouns 'Schraube', Dutch Nouns 'schroef', Danish Nouns 'skrue', Swedish Nouns 'skruv', Icelandic Nouns 'skrúfa'.

Verbs referencing "screw"

Czech Nouns šroub, Spanish Nouns tuerca, Polish Nouns śruba, Irish Nouns scriú.