haywire
Meanings
Plural: haywires
Noun
- wire for tying up bales of hay
- Wire used to bind bales of hay.
Adjective Satellite
- informal or slang terms for mentally irregular
- not functioning properly
- "has gone completely haywire"
Adj
- Roughly-made, unsophisticated, decrepit (from the use of haywire for temporary repairs).
- Behaviorally erratic or uncontrollable, especially of a machine or mechanical process.
Verb
- To attach or fix with haywire.
Origin / Etymology
From hay + wire.
The original meaning of 'likely to become tangled unpredictably or unusably, or fall apart', as though only bound with the kind of soft, springy wire used to bind hay bales comes from usage in New England lumber camps circa 1905 where haywire outfit became the common term to refer to slap-dash collections of logging tools. To go haywire has since evolved to represent the act of falling apart or behaving unpredictably, as would wire spooled under tension springing 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."
Synonyms
amiss, around the bend, awry, baler twine, balmy, barmy, bats, batty, bonkers, buggy, cracked, crackers, daft, dotty, fruity, kookie, kooky, loco, loony, loopy, nuts, nutty, round the bend, wacky, whacky, wrong
Scrabble Score: 16
haywire is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordhaywire is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
haywire is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary