Haywire Definition

hāwīr
noun
Wire for tying up bales of hay, straw, etc.
Webster's New World
adjective
Out of order; disorganized; confused.
Webster's New World
Not functioning or happening in a proper or orderly fashion.
Machinery that went haywire; an experiment that went haywire.
American Heritage
Crazy.
Webster's New World
Roughly-made, unsophisticated, decrepit (from the use of haywire for temporary repairs).
Wiktionary

Behaving erratically or uncontrollably, especially of a machine or mechanical process; usually used with the verb "go".

Wiktionary

Other Word Forms of Haywire

Noun

Singular:
haywire
Plural:
haywires

Idioms, Phrasal Verbs Related to Haywire

  • go haywire

Origin of Haywire

  • 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.

    From Wiktionary

  • From the use of baling wire for makeshift repairs

    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

Find Similar Words

Find similar words to haywire using the buttons below.

Words Starting With

Words Ending With

Unscrambles

haywire