What it means
Cattywampus means crooked, skewed, or sitting all wrong. People use it for stuff that's physically off, like a picture frame, and for situations that have gone a bit sideways too. It's got a homespun, smiling kind of flavor, especially in Southern US speech, and you'll also see catawampus as a spelling cousin.
Usage examples
"Bless your heart, that shelf’s gone all cattywampus. One more screw and a level, and maybe it’ll stop leaning like it’s tired."
"After the storm everything in the yard was cattywampus, the lawn chairs in the rose bushes, the trampoline against the fence, and somehow my granddad hat in the neighbour pool."
"The new bookshelf went up cattywampus despite three hours of measuring, three trips to the hardware store, and one heated discussion with my brother-in-law about which way is north."
"I hung that picture myself and now it's all cattywampus, so don't look at it too long or you'll start leaning too."
"We hit one pothole and the whole back seat went cattywampus with bags, fries, and my cousin's iced tea in the floorboard."
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Where it comes from
Cattywampus shows up in American English by the 1800s. It's widely linked to cater, an older word meaning diagonal or askew, with wampus added as a playful intensifier. The exact shaping is fuzzy in the record, but the word is firmly rooted in US dialect speech, especially Southern usage.
Other ways to say it
Editors of this term
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