eschew v.

Middle English shei, "easily frightened or startled," from late Old English sceoh "timid, easily startled," from Proto-Germanic *skeukh(w)az "afraid" (source also of Middle Low German schüwe, Dutch schuw, German scheu "shy;" Old High German sciuhen, German scheuchen "to scare away"). Cognates outside Germanic are uncertain, unless perhaps in Old Church Slavonic shchuti "to hunt, incite." Italian schivare "to avoid," Old French eschiver "to shun" are Germanic loan-words.

The meaning "shrinking from contact with others, difficult of approach because of timidity" is by c. 1600. The meaning "lacking, short of" is from 1895, American English gambling slang. As the last element of a compound (gun-shy, etc.) "frightened, averse, reluctant," by 1849.

the later Romans evidently found words beginning in sc-, sp-, st- difficult or unpleasant to pronounce; in Late Latin forms begin to emerge in i- (such as ispatium, ispiritu), and from 5c. this shifted to e-. The development was carried into the Romanic languages, especially Old French, and the French words were modified further after 15c. by natural loss of -s- (the suppression being marked by an acute accent on the e-), while in other cases the word was formally corrected back to the Latin spelling (for example spécial). Hence French état for Old French estat for Latin status, etc. It also affected Romanic borrowings from Germanic (such as espy, eschew).

A different e- is a reduced form of Latin ex- before consonants (see ex-), and the e- in enough is an unfelt survival of an Old English alternative form of ge-.

c. 1400, "turn aside, take an oblique course, run obliquely or at an angle," also "escape," intransitive senses now archaic or obsolete, from Old North French eskiuer "shy away from, avoid," Old French eschiver (see eschew; also compare shy (adj.)).

The transitive sense of "turn (something) aside, give oblique direction to" is attested from 1570s. The meaning "depict unfairly" is recorded by 1872, on notion of being "give oblique direction to," hence "to distort, to make slant"(compare bias, also an image of obliqueness). The statistical sense dates from 1929. Related: Skewed; skewing.

The adjectival meaning "slanting, turned to one side" is recorded from c. 1600, from the verb; the noun meaning "a slant, a deviation" is attested by 1680s.