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wonky

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wonky¹

  • /ˈwɒŋ.kɪ/ UK
  • /ˈwɑŋ.ki/ US
  • /ˈwɔŋ.ki/ US

Rhymes with -ɒŋki

Where it comes from

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 wonkier · wonkiest

  1. Lopsided, misaligned or off-centre. Who's this gimp with a wonky eye / I don't know but his lips are dry

    Similar: awry, misaligned, skew-whiff

  2. Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, UK Feeble, shaky or rickety. It seemed likely that he would need First Aid when those wonky steps yielded, at length, to the well-known law of gravitation.

    Similar: rickety

  3. informal Suffering from intermittent bugs.

    Similar: buggy, broken

  4. informal Generally incorrect. “It’s the ‘societal value’ part this looks wonky to me,” Mr. [Lee] McIntyre said in an email to The Times.

noun

  1. uncountable A subgenre of electronic music employing unstable rhythms, complex time signatures, and mid-range synths. By the late 2000s, dubstep had splintered into numerous factions, from brostep to wonky to the evocative “purple,” […]

wonky²

  • /ˈwɒŋ.kɪ/ UK
  • /ˈwɑŋ.ki/ US
  • /ˈwɔŋ.ki/ US

Rhymes with -ɒŋki

adjective wonkier · wonkiest

  1. Technically worded, in the style of jargon. 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.
  2. Technical in nature, difficult for non-specialists to understand. 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.

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adj misaligned

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MLA

"wonky." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/wonky. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

wonky. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/wonky

Chicago

"wonky." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/wonky.

BibTeX
@misc{wonky_2026,
  title = {wonky},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/wonky},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}