kilter
Chiefly in out of kilter: condition, form, or orderChiefly in out of kilter: (good) condition, form, or order; fettle.
» My friend is a bit off-kilter.
Meaning
2 senses(uncountable)Chiefly in out of kilter: (good) condition, form, or order; fettle.
not in kilter
Einklang, Ordnung, Zustand
A hand of playing cards which is useless.
- in working order
Examples
5 sentencesMy friend is a bit off-kilter.
That poster is not exactly straight, it seems off-kilter.
The lamp on the desk had an out-of-kilter lampshade.
ruПлафон лампы на столе был неисправен.
deDie Lampe auf dem Schreibtisch hatte einen schiefen Lampenschirm.
Ignoring feelings of tiredness knocks our body clocks out of kilter.
His dogmatic emphasis on the soap trade in relation to economic globalization struck me as somewhat off-kilter.
Translations
1 languagesBy meaning 1
Origin
A variant of dialectal kelter (“good condition, order”), of unknown origin; possibly relatA variant of dialectal kelter (“good condition, order”), of unknown origin; possibly related to kilt (“to gather up (skirts) around the body”) (cognate with Danish kilte (“to tuck”)), or Scots kilt (“proper way of doing something, knack”) (probably from kilt (“a slope; a tilt”), possibly a variant of English tilt). In the 19th century, kelter was the more common form in the United Kingdom, while kilter was more common in the United States. Due to the influence of the latter, kilter is now the more prevalent form in all English varieties.
Probably a variant of dialectal kelter (“odds and ends; litter, rubbish”); further etymology unknown.
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Forms
plural: kiltersSynonyms
1 synonyms- in working order:kelter
Word family
2 related wordsLessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Countable and uncountable nouns — Because it can be uncountable