haywire
UK /ˈheɪ.waɪ.ə(ɹ)/ · US /ˈheɪ.waɪɚ/ noun, adjective, verb
Forms haywires haywiring haywired
- noun Wire used to bind bales of hay.
- adjective Roughly-made, unsophisticated, decrepit (from the use of haywire for temporary repairs).
- adjective Behaviorally erratic or uncontrollable, especially of a machine or mechanical process. “It was working fine until it went haywire and wouldn't stop printing blank sheets.”
- verb (transitive, rare) To attach or fix with haywire.
Synonyms
baler twine balmy barmy bats batty bonkers buggy cracked crackers daft dotty fruity kooky kookie loco loony loopy nuts nutty round the bend around the bend wacky whacky amiss awry wrong
Etymology
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.”
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “haywire”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details