Intermediate+ Word of the Day: screw

screw around: this has two meanings, so use it carefully! The first is to waste time or mess around. Example: “Quit screwing around and help me with the housework!” The second meaning is to have sex with a lot of people. Example: “I can’t imagine Rachel ever settling down with one partner; she’s too busy screwing around!”

screw up: make a mistake. Example: “As the ship slowly sank, the engineer realized he had screwed up very badly.”

put the screws on/to someone: put pressure on someone. Example: “The criminal was determined not to rat on the rest of the gang, but the police were really putting the screws on her.”

have a screw loose: be crazy. Example: “You’re planning to fly solo around the world in a solar-powered plane? You must have a screw loose!”

Screw is also a vulgar term, meaning ‘to have sex with.’ Related to this meaning, the noun screw also describes the act of sexual intercourse. The vulgar expression screw you can refer to having sex with someone, but as an interjection, Screw you! is very rude and has a similar meaning to Go to hell!; you say it when you are really mad at someone.

At the end of this video clip, actors from the American TV comedy Scrubs sing a song called “Screw You.” Which meaning of the expression are they using in the song?

In UK English, screw is also a slang term for a prison guard. Example: “The prisoners were digging a tunnel to escape. Three of them were doing the actual digging and the other one was keeping a lookout for the screws.”

screwer (noun), screwable (adjective)

Screw dates back to the late 14th century as the late Middle English noun screw(e), and it meant ‘a wooden or metal cylinder with a spiral ridge, or the hole in which it turns.’ It derived from the Middle French escro(ue), with the same meaning, but its origin before that is uncertain. Some linguists think it came from the Latin scrofa, which meant ‘digger, router.’ There are some similar Germanic words, like the Middle Dutch schrûve and the Middle High German schrûbe, with the same meaning, but those also came from the Middle French term. The verb comes from the noun and first appeared in the late 16th century. Screw has been used as a slang term for sex since at least the early 18th century, while it has been used to mean ‘cheat’ since around the year 1900. To screw up, meaning ‘to make a mistake,’ appeared in the 1940s.