Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Wire used in baling hay.
  • adjective Not functioning or happening in a proper or orderly fashion.
  • adjective Mentally confused or erratic; crazy.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Wire used to bind bales of hay.
  • adjective Roughly-made, unsophisticated, decrepit (from the use of haywire for temporary repairs).
  • adjective Behaving erratically or uncontrollably, especially of a machine or mechanical process; usually used with the verb "go".

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective not functioning properly
  • noun wire for tying up bales of hay
  • adjective informal or slang terms for mentally irregular

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From the use of baling wire for makeshift repairs .]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

hay +‎ wire To go haywire possibly originally referred to the tendency of wire spooled under tension and used in the baling of hay to spring into an unmanageable tangle once a piece had been removed from the factory spool, e.g., "he took off the back of his watch, removed a gear and the whole works went haywire." Or a tendency of slap-dash repairs done with scraps of baling wire to fail catastrophically at times of mechanical stress. Perhaps the meaning of haywire – all in disarray or disrepair – stems from this expression.

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