Other forms: skewers; skewered; skewering
The pointed wooden stick you use to hold cubes of meat or vegetables together while they're cooking is called a skewer. You can also use a very long skewer to toast marshmallows over a campfire.
As a verb, skewer means to push a skewer through food: "Would you skewer those shrimps, and toss them on the grill?" It's also an informal term meaning to criticize someone so harshly that it probably hurts them: "This opinion piece in the newspaper really skewers the President." Experts guess that skewer has a Scandinavian root, possibly the Old Norse skifa, "a cut or slice."