Word.ws English Dictionary

out of key

out of key prepositional phrase: not in harmony (with); at odds (with).

Prepositional phrase

  1. (figuratively) Not in harmony (with); at odds (with).
    • It was a figure quite out of key with that lonely landscape, for it wore a panama hat and a neat dark suit, cut to the order of present day dandyism, which required coats to be tight-waisted up to the armpits and trousers belted in that they might bulge out into extra wide mathematically squared...1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 63

Antonyms of out of key

Questions about out of key

What does out of key mean?
Out of key means not in harmony (with); at odds (with).
What part of speech is out of key?
Out of key is a prepositional phrase.

Words near out of key in the dictionary

  1. Out of India theory
  2. out of it
  3. out of joint
  4. out of keeping with
  5. out of kelter
  6. out of key
  7. out of kilter
  8. out of line
  9. out of luck
  10. out of nowhere
  11. out of office

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: out of key (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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