Word.ws English Dictionary

screwtape

screwtape verb: to mess things up, to corrupt, to be devilish.

Verb

screwtape (third-person singular simple present screwtapes, present participle screwtaping, simple past and past participle screwtaped)

  1. To mess things up, to corrupt, to be devilish.
    • His collection of songlines and timelines snarled at him like a screwtaped confession.2007, Palace Pier Blues, →ISBN, page 33
    • Perhaps, beyond the lands of shadow, it will be exposed as merely a Screwtaped illusion.2013, Joseph Pearce, C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church, →ISBN

Noun

screwtape (plural screwtapes)

  1. One of a set of slow-tempo, lo-fi psychedelic mixtapes created by DJ Screw around 1992
    • In addition, slab riders were not only playing the screwtapes in their decks, they were also rapping on them.2016, Michelle L. Stefano, Peter Davis, The Routledge Companion to Intangible Cultural Heritage, →ISBN
    • It's something that they have taken from the Screwtapes. The influence is just that great.2018, Lance Scott Walker, Houston Rap Tapes: An Oral History of Bayou City Hip-Hop, →ISBN, page 312

Forms of screwtape

Verb
third-person singular presentscrewtapes
present participlescrewtaping
past participlescrewtaped
pastscrewtaped
Noun
pluralscrewtapes

Origin of screwtape

In reference to the C. S. Lewis book The Screwtape Letters (1942), about an inexperienced demon sent to tempt a man to sin, from screw + tape.

After DJ Screw, the Houston Southsider who produced the tapes.

Questions about screwtape

What does screwtape mean?
Screwtape means to mess things up, to corrupt, to be devilish.
What part of speech is screwtape?
Screwtape can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of screwtape?
The past tense of screwtape is screwtaped.

Words near screwtape in the dictionary

  1. screws, nuts and bolts
  2. screwstem
  3. screwstems
  4. screwstone
  5. screwstones
  6. screwtape
  7. screwtaped
  8. screwtapes
  9. screwtaping
  10. screwthread
  11. screwthreads

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: screwtape (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-screwtape.ogg.

Cite this entry: “screwtape.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/screwtape. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.