wonky
UK/ˈwɒŋ.kɪ//ˈwɑŋ.ki/
wonky adjective: lopsided, misaligned or off-centre.
Adjective (1)
wonky (comparative wonkier, superlative wonkiest)
- Lopsided, misaligned or off-centre.
- Who's this gimp with a wonky eye / I don't know but his lips are dry2016 April 2, “Afghan Business (Afghan Dan Send)”, performed by Dylan Brewer and Little T (Josh Tate)
- Synonyms:
- awry, misaligned, skew-whiff
- Feeble, shaky or rickety.
- It seemed likely that he would need First Aid when those wonky steps yielded, at length, to the well-known law of gravitation.1932, Frank Richards, The Magnet: The Terror of the Form
- Synonyms:
- rickety
- Suffering from intermittent bugs.
- Generally incorrect.
- “It’s the ‘societal value’ part this looks wonky to me,” Mr. [Lee] McIntyre said in an email to The Times.2026 May 19, Benjamin Mullin, quoting Lee McIntyre, “Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
Noun
wonky (uncountable)
- A subgenre of electronic music employing unstable rhythms, complex time signatures, and mid-range synths.
- By the late 2000s, dubstep had splintered into numerous factions, from brostep to wonky to the evocative “purple,” […]2015, Jan Kyrre Berg O. Friis, Robert P. Crease, Technoscience and Postphenomenology: The Manhattan Papers
Adjective (2)
wonky (comparative wonkier, superlative wonkiest)
- Technically worded, in the style of jargon.
- Climate change is an issue that might lend itself more easily to thematic framing in the news, due to the often highly technical and wonky language required to explain it.2009, Jesse Dale Holcomb, Faith, Science and Trust: Climate Change Framing Effects and Conservative Protestant Opinion, archived from the original on 07 Mar 2016
- McCain's message, while similar in content and equally as valid, is lost in the minutiae of “'high-risk' pools” and wonky jargon.2010, Michael Maslansky, Scott West, Gary DeMoss, David Saylor, The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics
- Technical in nature, difficult for non-specialists to understand.
- During the boom times, Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg, Reese Witherspoon and Matt Damon all gushed about or invested in crypto projects, bringing a mainstream audience to the wonky world of digital currencies.2023 July 6, Erin Griffith, David Yaffe-Bellany, “How Tom Brady’s Crypto Ambitions Collided With Reality”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
- [Senator Todd] Young is a low-key Indiana lawmaker with an enthusiasm for wonky, but important national security issues. He's a protégé of the late Sen. Richard Lugar, a low-key Indiana lawmaker who had an enthusiasm for wonky but important national security issues.2025 April 11, Steve Inskeep, “One Republican tries to make sense of Trump's tariffs”, in NPR
wonky meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada
wonky in Tamil
- நிலையிலா
wonky in Urdu
- بیمار, خراب, لرزاں, ناقص
wonky in Malayalam
- crooked, twisting, winding
- വളഞ്ഞ, വക്രി, വളവുള്ള, ആനത, അരാള, വഞ്ജുല
- wobbly, unstable, unsteady
- ചാഞ്ചാടുന്ന, ലോലത്ത്, ഇളകിയാടുന്ന, ലേലായ, വ്യാലോല, അങ്ങോട്ടുമിങ്ങോട്ടും ആടുന്ന
wonky in Kannada
- ಅಸ್ಥಿರವಾದ, ಸೋಲಬಹುದಾದ, ತತ್ತರಿಸುವ, ಅಲ್ಲಾಡುವ, ಒಡೆಯಬಹುದಾದ
Synonyms of wonky
Forms of wonky
| comparative | wonkier |
|---|---|
| superlative | wonkiest |
Origin of wonky
From English dialectal wanky, alteration of Middle English wankel (“unstable, shaky”), from Old English wancol (“unstable”), from Proto-West Germanic *wankul (“swaying, shaky, unstable”).
From wonk + -y.
Words formed from wonky
Phrases with wonky
Words that rhyme with wonky
Questions about wonky
- What does wonky mean?
- Wonky means lopsided, misaligned or off-centre.
- What is wonky in Tamil?
- Wonky in Tamil is நிலையிலா. See Wonky meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is wonky?
- Wonky can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce wonky?
- Wonky is pronounced /ˈwɒŋ.kɪ/ (UK).
Words near wonky in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wonky (page history and authors); wonky (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); wonky (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); wonky (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); wonky (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-wonky.ogg, en-au-wonky.ogg.
Cite this entry: “wonky.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wonky. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.