haywire

Meanings

Noun

• Wire used to bind bales of hay.

Adjective

• Roughly-made, unsophisticated, decrepit (from the use of haywire for temporary repairs).
• Behaviorally erratic or uncontrollable, especially of a machine or mechanical process; usually used with the verb "go".

Related

Similar words

• baler twine

Origin

• 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."