toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

awry
in a sentence

show 157 more with this conextual meaning
  • Brom was running toward him-eyes large, hair awry, and one side of his head caked with dried blood.†   (source)
  • The one set of plans she had made--getting away from Sweet Home--went awry so completely she never dared life by making more.†   (source)
  • A monument to kitsch gone woefully awry.†   (source)
  • The steering's all awry.†   (source)
  • I entered a scene that felt like a holiday party gone awry—a few bottles of champagne rested on one desk, surrounded by tiny paper cups.†   (source)
  • Somehow, my plan for last night had gone horribly awry, and I needed come to grips with the consequences.†   (source)
  • He leaped in the air, barking and spinning, obviously at a loss as to how such a carefully laid battle strategy could have gone so badly awry.†   (source)
  • Your task as you deliberate together on these proceedings is to ensure that you do nothing to yield to a universe in which things go awry by happenstance.†   (source)
  • Words, dimly familiar but twisted all awry, like faces in a funhouse mirror, fled past, leaving no impression on the glassy surface of my brain.†   (source)
  • We ran through the doorway, dodging a random wombat that went flying over our heads—possibly someone's spell gone awry—and stepped into complete pandemonium.†   (source)
  • Second, accompanied by a K.B.I. agent, Mrs. Helm had explored every room at River Valley Farm, toured the house in the expectation that she might notice something awry or absent, and she had.†   (source)
  • Finally, my isolation furnished my organization with an excuse in case matters went awry: the old man was alone and completely cut off, and his actions were taken by him as an individual, not a representative of the ANC.†   (source)
  • August is gracious, charming, and mischievous--so much so that as the evening wears on I begin to think the incident with Rex was just a joke gone awry.†   (source)
  • They juggled them back and forth between each other like circus clowns using bowling pins, faster and faster, until one throw went awry.†   (source)
  • Aureliano Segundo did not let the chance go by to regale his cousins with a thunderous champagne and accordion party that was interpreted as a tardy adjustment of accounts with the carnival, which went awry because of the jubilee.†   (source)
  • The young lieutenant had been painstakingly trained to understand everything that went on in the reactor systems and to know what to do if things went awry.†   (source)
  • But Louisa's vigor was such that even if Roscoe had got his thoughts in place they would soon have been jarred awry.†   (source)
  • I have not had an adrenaline rush since I took my little detour, one of nature's irresistible highs, denied by brain chemistry gone awry, at the claws of the monster.†   (source)
  • People didn't stick their heads into ovens with the gas on, jump in front of subway trains or come plummeting like dead weights out of hotel windows with a whoosh! accelerating at the rate of sixteen feet per second to land with a hideous plop! on the sidewalk and die disgustingly there in public like an alpaca sack full of hairy strawberry ice cream, bleeding, pink toes awry.†   (source)
  • This year, something has gone awry.†   (source)
  • THE NEWBORNS SEEMED UNREAL to Ghosh, all noses and wrinkles, as if they'd been planted in Hema's house, a lab experiment gone awry.†   (source)
  • It was when Paulsson arrived that things really started to go awry.†   (source)
  • Elinor agreed then and gently told the girl that we needed her above, in case aught went awry and we did not return to the surface by afternoon.†   (source)
  • … but perhaps the Seven sent you here so that one white knight might make right what another set awry.†   (source)
  • However, their plans went awry when Bobby was tipped off by anonymous sources that Marilyn Monroe had unexpectedly died.†   (source)
  • "If things go awry, running won't help you anyway."†   (source)
  • BOSTON, FEB. 13 (UPI) —Plans for a Valentine's Day wedding went awry because a tall bride-to-be has disappeared after leaving a note to her still taller fiancé, and her engagement ring pinned to a pillow.†   (source)
  • Tappan remained very hopeful that the Supreme Court would find for the blacks, but he was not abandoning his plan for a quick evacuation in case something went awry.†   (source)
  • I remember its hand, definitely Lelia's, considerable, vertical, architectural, but gone awry in parts, scrawling and windbent, in unschemed colors of ink and graphite and Crayola.†   (source)
  • The first time they crawled down the slope and through the mine fields they had been three, and in every subsequent three-man expedition nothing had gone awry.†   (source)
  • The neat, even pieces of the day have somehow slipped awry.†   (source)
  • A hostage rescue operation had gone awry, he and two other operatives were about to be killed.†   (source)
  • My orientation course in Ottawa had taught me that one never questioned information emanating from another department; and if a field operation based on such information went awry, it was invariably the fault of the fellow in the field.†   (source)
  • Tears of rage that all his plans had gone awry.†   (source)
  • 1670) has "This tryst or odious awry, O Niccolo," which besides bringing in a quite graceless Alexandrine, is difficult to make sense of syntactically, unless we accept the rather unorthodox though persuasive argument of J.-K. Sale that the line is really a pun on "This trystero dies irae…… " This, however, it must be pointed out, leaves the line nearly as corrupt as before, owing to no clear meaning for the word trystero. unless it be a pseudo-Italianate variant on triste ( =…†   (source)
  • Her first goal was to stop his drinking, but as months passed and the courtship became complicated her program went awry, and then there was a crisis.†   (source)
  • Liz turned in terror and saw him standing, his white face bleeding and his clothes awry, saw a guard hit him with his fist, so that he half fell; then they were both upon him, had lifted him up, thrusting his arms high behind his back.†   (source)
  • One old woman was pulling the door open in short, gradual jerks, and when she saw the nurse a strange smile forced her old face dangerously awry.†   (source)
  • When Hitler rose to power in 1933, though, the painting business fell slightly awry.   (source)
  • But every time a pilot chooses a plan, he is supposed to prepare a backup in case things go awry.†   (source)
  • His jaw is awry on the left, as if it was badly broken and then healed improperly.†   (source)
  • Never before had an occupation gone so awry.†   (source)
  • That is, if Mandel doesn't throw the scheme awry, thought Roran.†   (source)
  • Frey had intended to keep her captive, but perhaps something went awry.†   (source)
  • Vrangr meant "awry," and Eragon agreed that it fitted the sword better.†   (source)
  • Time, something expressed analogously with numbers, goes entirely awry in battle, as you must know.†   (source)
  • We princes make our careful plans and the gods smash them all awry.†   (source)
  • That was all it took for Quentyn Martell to realize that something had gone awry.†   (source)
  • But Kennedy's good intentions have gone awry.†   (source)
  • If Abel's scheme went awry, Ramsay would make their dying long and hard.†   (source)
  • …up against her spotless appliances; Ron, long and lanky; Hermione, her bushy hair tied back in a long plait; Fred and George, grinning identically; Bill, badly scarred and longhaired; Mr. Weasley, kind-faced, balding, his spectacles a little awry; Mad-Eye, battleworn, one-legged, his bright blue magical eye whizzing in its socket; Tonks, whose short hair was her favorite shade of bright pink; Lupin, grayer, more lined; Fleur, slender and beautiful, with her long silvery blonde hair;…†   (source)
  • He was aware, of course, that something was awry in his life, and all lives, but put the problem where it belonged, at the foot of the Originator of Life.†   (source)
  • A while ago, the Abnegation were forced to enlist the help of Erudite in order to achieve that purpose, but eventually everything went awry because of Jeanine.†   (source)
  • No matter where Harry went within the castle, the sole topic of conversation was Dumbledore's flight, and though some of the details may have gone awry in the retelling (Harry overheard one second-year girl assuring another that Fudge was now lying in St Mungo's with a pumpkin for a head) it was surprising how accurate the rest of their information was.†   (source)
  • The plash of water, the sight of her shoes and stockings awry on the path where she had flung them; or Here Boy lapping in the puddle near her feet, and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty.†   (source)
  • It was not something done lightly in Alagaesia, as a blessing could easily go awry and prove to be more curse than boon-especially if it was spoken with ill intent or lack of conviction.†   (source)
  • But this is where your thinking goes awry, for along any such biological line, the farther points are not more advanced than the earlier points, they are only better adapted.†   (source)
  • Some force in the world had gone awry.†   (source)
  • I was terrified to the point of nausea by the knowledge that something horrible had gone awry in the clearing.†   (source)
  • Just when normal life felt almost possible—when the world held some kind of order, meaning, even loveliness (the prismatic spray of light through an icicle; the stillness of a sunrise), some small thing would go awry and the veil of optimism was torn away, the barren world revealed.†   (source)
  • When our powers of rapid cognition go awry, they go awry for a very specific and consistent set of reasons, and those reasons can be identified and understood.†   (source)
  • Similarly, Sula, also an only child, but wedged into a household of throbbing disorder constantly awry with things, people, voices and the slamming of doors, spent hours in the attic behind a roll of linoleum galloping through her own mind on a gray-and-white horse tasting sugar and smelling roses in full view of a someone who shared both the taste and the speed.†   (source)
  • She is wearing a T-shirt like the dwarf's and Viktor says this is the result of an importing ploy gone awry.†   (source)
  • Something was awry here.†   (source)
  • Both women vehemently opposed what Nasuada described as "a harebrained scheme that will have catastrophic consequences for everyone in Alagaesia if it goes awry!"†   (source)
  • But her spell went awry.†   (source)
  • He stood there, legs spread wide for balance, tankard in hand, iron-bound cap awry, and cried, "Hear, hear!†   (source)
  • Do you not have the wit to see that if this goes awry you'll do me more good outside, digging, than in here, smothering companionably?†   (source)
  • Others came to see that nothing went awry, that the shallow-minded and small-hearted kept their meanness at bay, and that the entire event be characterized by that abiding gentleness of spirit to which they themselves had arrived by the simple determination not to let anything—anything at all: not failed crops, not rednecks, lost jobs, sick children, rotten potatoes, broken pipes, bug-ridden flour, third-class coal, educated social workers, thieving insurance men, garlic-ridden…†   (source)
  • They are subtle and complex and surprisingly common, and what happened on Wheeler Avenue is a powerful example of how mind reading works—and how it sometimes goes terribly awry.†   (source)
  • An operation gone awry, and the Americans trying to find out who was responsible and how it was done so that they might try to do it themselves?†   (source)
  • Years later, when Sam Frith had taken me out of that unhappy croft, his hands, caressing me, found the nobbly place near my right shoulder where the bones at the base of my neck had knit awry.†   (source)
  • Something is awry here, I can smell it.†   (source)
  • She pointed at Barst and screamed in the ancient language, but the spell went awry, for another elf slumped forward and toppled out of his saddle, the front of his body split from head to seam.†   (source)
  • This will put all his plans awry.†   (source)
  • It required a knight to make a knight, and if something should go awry tonight, dawn might find him dead or in a dungeon.†   (source)
  • Dare I ask how it went awry?†   (source)
  • Even in the gloom of the Wolf's Den, Davos Seaworth could sense that something was awry this morning.†   (source)
  • Aerys had not set foot outside the Red Keep since Duskendale, yet suddenly he announced that he would accompany Prince Rhaegar to Harrenhal, and everything had gone awry from there.†   (source)
  • Had something gone awry?†   (source)
  • We had not yet moved when she lay toppled on the floor, her wig fallen from her head and her face awry like a mask.†   (source)
  • Her bands of black hair awry, her clothes rustling stiffly as clothes through winter quiet, Miss Theo strode half-carrying Miss Myra to the chair in the mirror, and put her down.†   (source)
  • His hands automatically straightened an object or two that I had inadvertently pushed awry.†   (source)
  • Everything I've done today has gone awry-even the soup!†   (source)
  • His mouth was twisted awry till it met his ears … flakes of fire streamed from it.†   (source)
  • He has lost his straw hat, his tie is awry, and his blue suit is dirty.†   (source)
  • Your hair's parted awry", she said, fixing me with her little black eyes.†   (source)
  • He looks out over the land, awry-haired, mouthing the snuff slowly against, his gums.†   (source)
  • His straw bonnet with much tossing was awry.†   (source)
  • There was the dining room, with chairs pushed awry and food still on the plates.†   (source)
  • His new coat did not fit very well, for the tailor had been hurried and some of the seams were awry.†   (source)
  • Then he hastily set about smoothing his hair and settling his ruffled shirt and his cravat which had slipped awry behind one ear.†   (source)
  • Then as though there was not enough trouble with the women of his house all awry, there was Wang Lung's youngest son.†   (source)
  • Across the street a window banged up in the parlor of Suggs' house and the Old Man Suggs appeared in the window clad only in his nightgown, his brutal old face inflamed with excitement, his shock of silvery white hair awry, his powerful shoulders and his thick hands gripping his crutches.†   (source)
  • …rain, the faint pearly globules, materialising on the gun barrels and the five headstones like drops of not-quite-congealed meltings from cold candles on the marble: the two flat heavy vaulted slabs, the other three headstones leaning a little awry, with here and there a carved letter or even an entire word momentary and legible in the faint light which the raindrops brought particle by particle into the gloom and released; now the two dogs came in, drifted in like smoke, their hair…†   (source)
  • His tie was slightly awry, he kept biting his nails, those of one hand only, his right…… I needn't go on, need I?†   (source)
  • Father Kleinsorge ran inside the mission house and scrambled up the stairs, which were awry and piled with plaster and lathing, and called to Mr Fukai from the doorway of his room.†   (source)
  • I tried Sebastian's door, found it locked, and hoped he was sleeping, but, when I came back from my bath, I found him sitting in the chair before my fire; he was dressed for dinner, all but his shoes, but his tie was awry and his hair on end; he was very red in the face and squinting slightly.†   (source)
  • …horse's tail the grey wiry mass of hair that pierced her scalp's upper surface; with her sickle of a greenish looking tusk that was in her head, and curled till it touched her ear, she couldlop the verdant branch of an oak in full bearing; blackened and smoke-bleared eyes she had; nose awry, wide-nostrilled; a wrinkled and freckled belly, variously unwholesome; warped crooked shins, garnished with massive ankles and a pair of capacious shovels; knotty knees she had and livid nails.†   (source)
  • …was almost as light as Clyde had been; when she moved it was like a mechanical doll, so that he supported and led her through the gate and up the short walk and into the doll-sized house and turned on the light for her and looked at the fixed sleep-walking face, the wide dark eyes as she stood there, still clutching the umbrella and the hatchet, the shawl and the black dress both stained with dirt where she had fallen, the black bonnet jerked forward and awry by the shock of the fall.†   (source)
  • His hands are halfclosed on either side of his plate, his head bowed a little, his awry hair standing into the lamplight.†   (source)
  • In the overcoat buttoned awry over the bathrobe he looked huge and shapeless like a disheveled bear as he stared at Quentin (the Southerner, whose blood ran quick to cool, more supple to compensate for violent changes of temperature perhaps, perhaps merely nearer the surface) who sat hunched in his chair, his hands thrust into his pockets as if he were trying to hug himself warm between his arms, looking somehow fragile and even wan in the lamplight, the rosy glow which now had nothing…†   (source)
  • Pa leans above the bed in the twilight, his humped silhouette partaking of that owl-like quality of awry-feathered, disgruntled outrage within which lurks a wisdom too profound or too inert for even thought.†   (source)
  • He came in, his ears red from the cold, his pinkish hair awry, and stood looking down at her, a faintly humorous smile on his lips.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Elsing dropped her sewing box on the floor and came back into the room, her false fringe jerking awry.†   (source)
  • Finally, Mammy, coming down the front stairs, her apron rumpled and spotted, her head rag awry, saw him and scowled.†   (source)
  • But things were mysteriously awry to-day.†   (source)
  • His hat was gone and his clothes were awry.†   (source)
  • A pause in the wrong place, an intonation misunderstood, and a whole conversation went awry.†   (source)
  • Her bonnet was awry; she was incomparably dowdy.†   (source)
  • And Hortense's skirts, becoming awry in some way, moved up to above her knees.†   (source)
  • The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry.†   (source)
  • My principles were never trained, Jane: they may have grown a little awry for want of attention.†   (source)
  • Her mouth awry.†   (source)
  • His fevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour for more and more of the scorching fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by the unwonted stimulant, permitted him to go any length to obtain it.†   (source)
  • …delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage, Is sicklied o'er with care, And all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.†   (source)
  • A wide-armed scarecrow fluttering in the wind, its tall decayed hat awry, stood near at hand in one place.†   (source)
  • It may be unbalanced to fly out of England, but to stay away eight months argues that the heart is awry as well as the head.†   (source)
  • For one rare moment he seemed to be clothed in the real apparel of boyhood: and, as he stood in the wings among the other players, he shared the common mirth amid which the drop scene was hauled upwards by two able-bodied priests with violent jerks and all awry.†   (source)
  • Solid to the touch—for I put out my hand and felt the rail of it—and with brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail bent awry.†   (source)
  • The spruce boughs had dried out brown and sear; the wind had blown the roof awry; the sides were leaning in.†   (source)
  • …to make certain, and had caught her betrayer red-handed; and being in the habit, when she made up a game of cards by herself, of playing her own and her adversary's hands at once, she would first stammer out Francoise's awkward apologies, and then reply to them with such a fiery indignation that any of us who happened to intrude upon her at one of these moments would find her bathed in perspiration, her eyes blazing, her false hair pushed awry and exposing the baldness of her brows.†   (source)
  • Yet, being far from certain that this attitude on his part was likely to lead to anything but defeat, he was inwardly depressed and awry.†   (source)
  • It went from me with a shock, like a ball fired from a rifle: but the image of Agnes, outraged by so much as a thought of this red-headed animal's, remained in my mind when I looked at him, sitting all awry as if his mean soul griped his body, and made me giddy.†   (source)
  • His head was awry, and he had a one-sided, crab-like way with him, as if his foundations had yielded at about the same time as those of the house, and he ought to have been propped up in a similar manner.†   (source)
  • The raggedest nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this crooked significance in it: "I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?"†   (source)
  • By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment it has all been a dark necessity.†   (source)
  • But the indefinable weight the dead rabbits had left on her mind caused her to feel more than usual pity for the career of this weak young man, particularly when she looked at the picture where he leaned against a tree with a flaccid appearance, his knee-breeches unbuttoned and his wig awry, while the swine apparently of some foreign breed, seemed to insult him by their good spirits over their feast of husks.†   (source)
  • He now saw clearly the figure of a red-haired gunner with his shako knocked awry, pulling one end of a mop while a French soldier tugged at the other.†   (source)
  • "It draws a few grimaces from me, sir, as I suppose you see," answered the youth, laughing at the very moment his countenance was a little awry with pain.†   (source)
  • She had on a dress of some light silky material, but put on strangely awry, not properly hooked up, and torn open at the top of the skirt, close to the waist: a great piece was rent and hanging loose.†   (source)
  • One was a map of the Pyncheon territory at the eastward, not engraved, but the handiwork of some skilful old draughtsman, and grotesquely illuminated with pictures of Indians and wild beasts, among which was seen a lion; the natural history of the region being as little known as its geography, which was put down most fantastically awry.†   (source)
  • That he should have set the buckle of his stock awry, it was indispensable that there should have taken place in him one of those emotions which may be designated as internal earthquakes.†   (source)
  • Besides those I have mentioned, there was an extremely dirty lady with her bonnet all awry and the ticketed price of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected home, Caddy told me, was like a filthy wilderness, but whose church was like a fancy fair.†   (source)
  • False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck upon them, and their hideous countenances were all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all staring and glaring with beastly excitement and want of sleep.†   (source)
  • Yes, everything is badly arranged, nothing fits anything else, this old world is all warped, I take my stand on the opposition, everything goes awry; the universe is a tease.†   (source)
  • The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the stirrup with trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle, righted himself, drew his saber, and with a happy and resolute countenance, opening his mouth awry, prepared to shout.†   (source)
  • Here the parrot, who had been standing on one leg since he screamed last, burst into a fit of laughter, bobbed himself derisively up and down on both legs, and finished by standing on one leg again, and pausing for a reply, with his head as much awry as he could possibly twist it.†   (source)
  • The whole tribe of decorous personages, who had never heretofore been seen with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into public view with the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects.†   (source)
  • He was lying on his back propped up high, and his small bony hands with their knotted purple veins were lying on the quilt; his left eye gazed straight before him, his right eye was awry, and his brows and lips motionless.†   (source)
  • As a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its wonted life, though it knew that the time of its destruction was near when the conditions of life to which its people were accustomed to submit would be completely upset.†   (source)
  • His wig was slightly awry, but aside from that and a certain brightness to his eyes, he showed no change from his normal controlled elegance.†   (source)
  • Leanjawed harpy, hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry.†   (source)
  • He turned to the right and on his right Master Dignam turned, his cap awry, his collar sticking up.†   (source)
  • The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow.†   (source)
  • To them might be added a long list of common American synonyms for /drunk/, for example, /piffled/, /pifflicated/, /awry-eyed/, /tanked/, /snooted/, /stewed/, /ossified/, /slopped/, /fiddled/, /edged/, /loaded/, /het-up/, /frazzled/, /jugged/, /soused/, /jiggered/, /corned/, /jagged/ and /bunned/.†   (source)
  • PRIVATE CARR: (His cap awry, advances to Stephen) Say, how would it be, governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?†   (source)
  • Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunney's tawny sherry, hurries by in her weeds, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets.†   (source)
  • A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ's terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own Son.†   (source)
  • Your crown's awry; I'll mend it and then play.†   (source)
  • His straight eyes he twisted then awry, looked at me a little, and then bent his head, and fell with it level with the other blind.†   (source)
  • No doubt I am making too free a confession And I may be committing an indiscretion, But since my attempt at silence has gone awry, Ask yourself why I sought to pacify Damis, and what made me listen so long And so kindly to your sweet love song?†   (source)
  • It was the friar of orders grey, As he forth walked on his way: Out, you rogue! you pluck my foot awry: [Strikes him.†   (source)
  • Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.†   (source)
  • …and that first moved; And now Saint Peter at Heaven's wicket seems To wait them with his keys, and now at foot Of Heaven's ascent they lift their feet, when lo A violent cross wind from either coast Blows them transverse, ten thousand leagues awry Into the devious air: Then might ye see Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost And fluttered into rags; then reliques, beads, Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, The sport of winds: All these, upwhirled aloft, Fly o'er the…†   (source)
  • * *and then he snored, Adown the ladder stalked Nicholay; for his head lay awry* And Alison full soft adown she sped.†   (source)
  • Then Numitor from his dead brother drew Th' ill-omen'd spear, and at the Trojan threw: Preventing fate directs the lance awry, Which, glancing, only mark'd Achates' thigh.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)