Definitions

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

  • adjective idiomatic Askew.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word off-kilter.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Does this word have anything to do with kilts?

    December 23, 2008

  • I can't wait for reesetee or bilby or whichbe.... to answer this one!

    December 23, 2008

  • Yes. It describes a Scottish stripper.

    Oh! You mean a real answer?

    December 23, 2008

  • Uh, well, yes, you see, this originates from the obsolete, Old English word oft-khilte, used to longingly reference any flamboyant drag queens from ancient Greece.

    December 23, 2008

  • It's actually a cricket term relating to a certain strategy of concentrating fielders in an arc between silly mid-off and deep long-off. This is advantageous against batsmen who are weak on the cover drive and have a poor off-side game. The off-kilter trap was famously used by the great West Indies team of the late 1970s to upset the rhythm of Indian master I. Khan Singh. His failure to produce any fluent batting right up to the whitewash at Georgetown led him to storm out of the post-match press conference, declaring 'Off-kilter? I'll give you rum-sucking reggae monkeys off-kilter!' as he launched an unripe coconut with a hook shot over the Barbados Cricket Club Members Bar. It was a grand moment, despite the impending destruction of the one working traffic light on the island.

    December 23, 2008

  • It's a corruption of Yiddish op gefilter, referring to the odor of rotten gefilte fish.

    December 23, 2008