awry

UK/əˈɹaɪ/US/əˈɹaɪ/

adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,257 of 15,258neutral

Awry means crooked, or gone wrong. Go awry, plans went awry, a hat set awry.

The physical sense means twisted out of line, and it goes after the noun or the verb, never before — a hat awry, not an awry hat. The commoner sense is figurative: plans go awry, which is the fixed phrase and much the most frequent use. Note the pronunciation, which is a-RYE and is very commonly got wrong on first reading.

Definitions of awry

1adjectiveawryCrooked, or gone wrong.C1
“After the windy walk, his tie was awry and his hair was a mess.”

awry is a state of being off course.

Where it comes from

Middle English awry is a-, on, plus wry, twisted, from Old English wrigian, to turn. Wry and wriggle come from the same turning.

Proto-Indo-European
*wreyḱ-
Middle English
awry
English, today
awry

From Middle English awry, awrie. by surface analysis, en + a + wry.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

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awry in the wild

"Wrong", a humorous track about a relationship that turned awry, was Jennings' final top ten country hit, reaching #5 on the charts.
The Eagle (album)
Released as a single in December 1963, the song details a teen street race gone awry.
Dead Man's Curve (song)
Right on cue, Fibber McGee and Molly's second honeymoon goes awry.
Here We Go Again (film)
Suffering only minor damage after the pilot had ejected from the aircraft during a training mission gone awry, the aircraft was recovered, repaired, and returned to service.
Cornfield Bomber
The story talks about the secret weather control experiment which goes awry.
Storm (1999 film)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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