haywire

Meaning

Noun

Wire used to bind bales of hay.

Adj

1. Roughly-made, unsophisticated, decrepit (from the use of haywire for temporary repairs).
2. Behaviorally erratic or uncontrollable, especially of a machine or mechanical process.

Verb

To attach or fix with haywire.

Synonyms

awry

confused

😕

daft

mazed

balmy

mixed-up

barmy

nutty

bats

disarranged

batty

amiss

bonkers

screwy

dotty

excited

buggy

around the bend

fruity

undone

unordered

unstuck

upset

wacky

whacky

wrong

cracked

round the bend

nuts

crackers

kookie

screw-loose

kooky

loony

loco

loopy

crazy

crack brained

anomalous

berserk

clouded

cuckoo

daffy

delirious

demented

disorganized

distracted

distraught

fractious

frantic

Translations

xera

bozuk

folle

aloz

deli

delirmek

durcheinander

baufällig

pericolante

kaputt

übergeschnappt

vernichtete

sonat

völlig durcheinander

vernichtet

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈheɪ.waɪ.ə(ɹ)/

Etymology

From hay + wire.
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."