warp

To warp is to bend slowly out of true. A door that stops shutting because the frame has warped, a record left on a sunny windowsill, a shelf sagging in the middle after a wet winter.

Wood is the classic case: timber warps as it dries unevenly, and a warped board rocks when you set it on a flat floor. The figurative use is about people — a warped sense of humour, a mind warped by years of suspicion, warped priorities — all meaning twisted away from normal rather than broken. In weaving, the warp is the set of threads stretched tight lengthwise on the loom while the weft crosses over and under them; that was the word's first job, and it is still the technical one. Science fiction added warp speed and the time warp, where the thing bent out of shape is space itself. Keep warp away from break: something warped still holds together, it has just gone crooked.