cattywampus
Not lined up
Cattywampus means askew, crooked, or positioned diagonally rather than straight.
A picture frame hangs cattywampus on the wall; furniture sits cattywampus in a room.
The word is primarily Southern and Midland American dialect, with variant spellings including catawampus and kitty-corner sharing the diagonal sense.
The whole shed had gone cattywampus after the storm.
Tilted from true
- awryCrooked or wrong
- lopsidedUnequally balanced
- tiltedAngled from vertical
- skewedAsymmetrically shifted
off-kilter · cockeyed · misaligned · crooked · aslant · slanted · diagonal · angled
Inverted or disordered
- jumbledDisordered, lacking arrangement
- disorganizedLacking systematic arrangement
- haphazardLacking organization or plan
- helter-skelterDisorderly and hasty
scattered · muddled · scrambled · haywire · out-of-whack · higgledy-piggledy · disheveled · cluttered
askew
Tilted from true
skewed · off-kilter · cockeyed · misaligned · crooked · aslant · slanted · diagonal · angled · oblique
topsy-turvy
Inverted or disordered
- jumbledDisordered, lacking arrangement
- disorganizedLacking systematic arrangement
- haphazardLacking organization or plan
helter-skelter · scattered · muddled · scrambled · haywire · out-of-whack · higgledy-piggledy · disheveled · cluttered · messy
colloquial
Casual, everyday language
- SouthernOf the region below
- dialectalOf regional speech patterns
- whimsicalPlayfully fanciful or erratic
colorful · countrified · homespun · informal · regional · rustic · slang · vernacular
- American slangbamboozle, bogus, bunkum, conniption, discombobulate
- Americanismsaluminum, fixin' to, apartment, howdy, candy
- crookedcrooked, askew, awry, lopsided, off-center
- Regional Slangy'all, bless your heart, ope, you betcha, wicked good
- dialectal expressionsyall, aint, howdy, reckon, fixin to
- fancy wordsgrandiloquent, magniloquent, sesquipedalian, pulchritudinous, tintinnabulation