askance
pronunciation
How to pronounce askance in British English:
UK [əˈskæns]
How to pronounce askance in American English:
US [əˈskæns]
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- Adjective:
- (used especially of glances) directed to one side with or as if with doubt or suspicion or envy
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- Adverb:
- with suspicion or disapproval
- with a side or oblique glance
Word Origin
- askance
- askance: [16] The origins of askance remain obscure. When it first entered the language it meant literally ‘obliquely, sideways’ (‘He bid his angels turn askance the poles of Earth’, John Milton, Paradise Lost 1667), so a possible source is Italian a scancio ‘obliquely, slantingly’, but this has never been firmly established. Its metaphorical use in the phrase look askance dates from the 17th century.
- askance (adv.)
- 1520s, "sideways, asquint," of obscure origin. OED has separate listings for askance and obsolete Middle English askance(s) and no indication of a connection, but Barnhart and others derive the newer word from the older one. The Middle English word, recorded early 14c. as ase quances and found later in Chaucer, meant "in such a way that; even as; as if;" and as an adverb "insincerely, deceptively." It has been analyzed as a compound of as and Old French quanses (pronounced "kanses") "how if," from Latin quam "how" + si "if." The E[nglish] as is, accordingly, redundant, and merely added by way of partial explanation. The M.E. askances means "as if" in other passages, but here means, "as if it were," i.e. "possibly," "perhaps"; as said above. Sometimes the final s is dropped .... [Walter W. Skeat, glossary to Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale," 1894] Also see discussion in Leo Spitzer, "Anglo-French Etymologies," Philological Quarterly 24.23 (1945), and see OED entry for askance (adv.) for discussion of the mysterious ask- word cluster in English. Other guesses about the origin of askance include Old French a escone, from past participle of a word for "hidden;" Italian a scancio "obliquely, slantingly;" or that it is a cognate of askew.
Synonym
Example
- 1. Cure amblyopia and look askance at such ?
- 2. She looked askance at our scheme .
- 3. My wife looked at me askance when I told her .
- 4. Asian policymakers are entitled to look askance at foreign bondholders .
- 5. When revolutionary zionist pioneers first pitched up in palestine , they tended to look askance at the existing orthodox jews as dusty museum pieces .