wonky

English

WOTD – 25 April 2009

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwɒŋ.kɪ/
• (General American) enPR: wŏngʹkē, IPA^(key): /ˈwɑŋ.ki/, /ˈwɔŋ.ki/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒŋki

Etymology 1

From English dialectal wanky, alteration of Middle English wankel (“unstable, shaky”), from Old English wancol (“unstable”), from Proto-West Germanic *wankul (“swaying, shaky, unstable”).

Adjective

wonky (comparative wonkier, superlative wonkiest)

1. Lopsided, misaligned or off-centre.

   Synonyms: awry, misaligned, skew-whiff

   • 2016 April 2, “Afghan Business (Afghan Dan Send)”, performed by Dylan Brewer and Little T (Josh Tate):

     Who's this gimp with a wonky eye / I don't know but his lips are dry

2. (chiefly British, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland) Feeble, shaky or rickety.

   Synonym: rickety

   • 1932, Frank Richards, The Magnet: The Terror of the Form:

     It seemed likely that he would need First Aid when those wonky steps yielded, at length, to the well-known law of gravitation.

3. (informal, computing) Suffering from intermittent bugs.

   Synonyms: buggy, broken

4. (informal) Generally incorrect.

Derived terms

• wonkily
• wonkiness
• wonky hole

Noun

wonky (uncountable)

1. (music) A subgenre of electronic music employing unstable rhythms, complex time signatures, and mid-range synths.
   • 2015, Jan Kyrre Berg O. Friis, Robert P. Crease, Technoscience and Postphenomenology: The Manhattan Papers:

     By the late 2000s, dubstep had splintered into numerous factions, from brostep to wonky to the evocative “purple,” […]

Etymology 2

From wonk +‎ -y.

Adjective

wonky (comparative wonkier, superlative wonkiest)

1. Technically worded, in the style of jargon.
   • 2009, Jesse Dale Holcomb, Faith, Science and Trust: Climate Change Framing Effects and Conservative Protestant Opinion‎^[1], archived from the original on 7 March 2016:

     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.

   • 2010, Michael Maslansky, Scott West, Gary DeMoss, David Saylor, The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics‎^[2]:

     McCain's message, while similar in content and equally as valid, is lost in the minutiae of “'high-risk' pools” and wonky jargon.

   • 2023 July 6, Erin Griffith, David Yaffe-Bellany, “How Tom Brady’s Crypto Ambitions Collided With Reality”, in The New York Times‎^[3], →ISSN:

     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.

Anagrams

• y'know