Word.ws English Dictionary

akilter

akilter adjective: crooked, out of alignment, askew.

Adjective

akilter (comparative more akilter, superlative most akilter)

  1. crooked, out of alignment, askew
    • All of their gardens had been crushed by winter storms and their corn patches were defeated and all akilter.1995, Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn, page 109
  2. (figuratively) twisted, dysfunctional
    • He knew something was wrong by the smell of the house and the sounds and colours of uneasy light that told him the mood of things was all akilter.2002, Iris Murdoch, The Time of the Angels, page 297

Forms of akilter

comparativemore akilter
superlativemost akilter

Origin of akilter

From a- + kilter?

Questions about akilter

What does akilter mean?
Akilter means crooked, out of alignment, askew.
What part of speech is akilter?
Akilter is an adjective.

Words near akilter in the dictionary

  1. Akil
  2. akill
  3. akilled
  4. akilling
  5. akills
  6. akilter
  7. akim
  8. akimbo
  9. akimboed
  10. akimboing
  11. akimbos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: akilter (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “akilter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/akilter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.