crooked

[ krook-id krookt ]

adjective

1. not straight; bending; curved:

   a crooked path.

   Synonyms: twisted, spiral, tortuous, flexuous, sinuous, devious, winding

2. askew; awry:

   The picture on the wall seems to be crooked.

3. deformed:

   a man with a crooked back.

   Synonyms: misshapen

4. not straightforward; dishonest.

   Synonyms: fraudulent, deceitful, knavish, unscrupulous

5. bent and often raised or moved to one side, as a finger or neck.
6. (of a coin) polygonal:

   a crooked sixpence.

crooked

/ ˈkrʊkɪd /

adjective

1. bent, angled or winding
2. set at an angle; not straight
3. deformed or contorted
4. informal.
   dishonest or illegal
5. crooked on informal.
   crooked onalsokrʊkt hostile or averse to

Derived Forms

• ˈcrookedly, adverb
• ˈcrookedness, noun

Other Words From

• crooked·ly adverb
• crooked·ness noun
• un·crooked adjective
• un·crooked·ly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of crooked¹

First recorded in 1200–50; Middle English croked; crook ¹, -ed ²

Example Sentences

Our world would wobble more, our horizons would be crooked, and our shortest paths would be harder to find.

From Quanta Magazine

It didn’t look crooked or out of place, so I went ahead with my trip and my hiking.

From Washington Post

He cited “the crooked Democratic machine,” which has been in decline for years.

From Washington Post

In a town full of Bernini masterpieces, the modest jack-o-lanterns I sculpt—their crooked smiles and woefully off-center eyes—are hailed as true wonders.

From Fortune

I turned around and he grinned at me, his teeth as crooked as mine.

From MIT Technology Review

He and the others in the Circle of Trust want crooked judges ditched and the notoriously corrupt police reformed.

From The Daily Beast

And there was an underlying compassion for each character, no matter how crooked or misguided or totally bananas.

From The Daily Beast

Smiling on the red carpet, Gaga showed off a set of oversized rotten dentures, featuring "metallic gums and crooked teeth."

From The Daily Beast

The economy melts down because of something a bunch of crooked bankers do.

From The Daily Beast

A person, Kant tells us, is crooked timber from which no straight thing can be made.

From The Daily Beast

They come to a halt suddenly, before a little huddling figure, with its face hidden in its arms, crouched beside a crooked rail.

From Project Gutenberg

She wore an old poke bonnet and carried a crooked stick, and there seemed to be a hump upon her back.

From Project Gutenberg

Amy, who was strong and quick, reached over the gunwale of the canoe and seized upon the crooked figure.

From Project Gutenberg

Sometimes they would clamp a crooked stick between a grooved piece of sandstone and a flat bone.

From Project Gutenberg

It may be a mere dialectal form of 'crooked,' or it may be miswritten for kroked, the usual old spelling.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• curved
• curving
• devious
• errant
• gnarled
• meandering
• serpentine
• sinuous
• twisted
• twisting
• winding