agley means wrong; askew. It carries an Arena rating of 1607, earned across 4 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, agley ranks #2,355 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #3,155 of 17,140 for Most Whimsical Words, #3,221 of 17,163 for Funniest Words, #4,524 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words.
agley is pronounced /əˈɡleɪ/.
Why “agley” is a great word
Wrong, awry, or askew, especially of plans or expectations. Formed within English from the prefix a- (on, in, at) and the Scots verb glee or gley (to squint, look sideways). Unlike "awry," which suggests a mere deviation from course, or "amiss," which indicates a general fault, agley carries the specific, fateful torque of things twisting from their intended path. It is the plough that finds a stone hidden in the field, the betrothal ring slipping from damp fingers into the grass, the single slip of a chisel that mars the nearly-finished carving—the quiet, unemphatic ruin of what seemed surely laid, now gazing sideways from the path it meant to take.
Etymology
Borrowed from Scots agley.
adj
- Wrong; askew.e.g.“But though the bear in the picture was a disguised man he appeared so naturally calm, so benignly strong, that beside him Pete […] looked comparatively shifty and agley.” — 1983, Alasdair Gray, “The Great Bear Cult”, in Every Short Story 1951-2012, Canongate, published 2012, page 57:
adv
- Wrong, awry, askew, amiss, or distortedly.e.g.“X tells of cavalry; of Sheridan, Hampton and Fitz Lee;
Of Early’s Valley march, that Sheridan long held agley!” — 1932, Rosewell Page, The Iliads of the South: an epic of the War Between the States, Garrett and Massie, p. 165
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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