Wonky

[aleCcowaN]

"This is the most wonky place I've ever been in my life"
[Scene from BBC's Escape to the Country]

wonky = askew? (ladeado; que toma una forma de paralelogramo) / skew-whiff? (torcido, chueco) / lopsided? (torcido pa'llá)

BE and/or AE?
formal, colloquial, slang?

other meanings?
(corrections and additions welcome)

[wrholt]

AE yes, don't know about BE. Varios meanings. Said of things = "strange" or "not working quite right". Said of people, "strange", "eccentric". In this photo, and with my AE ears, I hear it as "strangely shaped and/or decorated". (Sorry about telegraphese; limited net time while visiting Mom.)

[aleCcowaN]

Thank you very much.

About the room, the mantelshelf is perfectly horizontal but the panel on its right is sloped some 3 or 4 degrees, and the floor is convex accordingly.

[Perikles]

In BrE, wonky means not at an angle you would expect. Such as a wonky wall not vertical, but more commonly a flat surface of, say, a table, which is not horizontal or is unstable.

Edit: Colloquial

[aleCcowaN]

A table which has a shorter leg -or is placed on an irregular floor- the kind you need a coin or a wooden wedge to level and stabilize it, would it be called "a wonky table"?

Because we say "la mesa baila" or "bailotea", or more locally "la mesa hace uonqui uonqui" (or "uinqui uinqui", "cuin cuin", "cuinqui uinqui", "uinqui cuin", or similar onomatopoeias).

[Chris]

Weird, off kilter.

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by aleCcowaN

A table which has a shorter leg -or is placed on an irregular floor- the kind you need a coin or a wooden wedge to level and stabilize it, would it be called "a wonky table"?.

No, that would be a wobbly table, if it kept moving because of a lack of a wedge. If it were permanently not horizontal (unhorizontal?) then it would be wonky.

So if the wedges used to stabilize were such that the table finished up not horizontal, the wobbly table becomes a wonky one.

Others may disagree.

[aleCcowaN]

Originally Posted by Perikles

No, that would be a wobbly table, ...

Thank you! I'd totally forgotten that term. I love English, how precise it is.

Originally Posted by Chris

Weird, off kilter.

Thank you for that. By off kilter you mean someone or something quite unconventional, or is it something askew in the physical world?

[Chris]

Well, kilter as defined by Webster is proper or usual state or condition. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kilter

I don't think I've ever heard kilter by itself. Always off kilter or out of kilter. That's beside the point though. Webster defines off kilter as a bit askew. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti...0&t=1306769787 Sounds just like something wonky to me.

[Caballero]

No, that would be a wobbly table

AmE: That wobbly table sure looks wonky (weird).

[wrholt]

Yep, a wobbly table keeps rocking or moving back and forth. A wonky table doesn't move back and forth, but your pencil keeps rolling off the table because it isn't properly level.

It seems to me that the core concept behind "wonky" is that something doesn't quite fit expectations in some way: tables or floors are either not level or are not properly flat, walls are not plumb, a ball is unevenly weighted so that it doesn't roll in a straight line, a person acts or reacts in an unexpected way, a car shakes while driving it because a wheel is mounted with the wrong alignment or an axle is bent or the tire isn't perfectly round, and so on.