haywire
hay·wire
noun
adjective
not functioning properly
- “something is amiss”
- “has gone completely haywire”
- “something is wrong with the engine”
Origin
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.”
Phrases
- go haywire
Related words
Broader terms
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.