All 5 Uses

askew
in
Underworld, by DeLillo
(Auto-generated)

They were arranged in eight staggered ranks with a few stray planes askew at the fringes.†

askew = not straight; or not right
The boy with necktie ever askew, Matthew Aloysius Shay, fingernails bitten to the pink, one of her brainier boys, male parent missing.†
She had a full mouth that was too bunched and puckered and also slightly askew, designed to speak asides, and her voice had tonal changes that were interesting, it had dips and hollows and husky undertows.†
It stood alone here, with mountains behind it, and carried the tilted lyric of a misplaced object, like some prairie drive-in shut down for years with the audio hookups all askew and the huge screen facing blankly toward a cornfield.†
It was as if a science-fiction force had entered the house and made some things askew while sparing others.†
*

Definitions:

(1) (askew)
not straight (not in proper alignment)

or:

(when used figuratively) not right, or not as planned
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
Less commonly, askew is used in the idiom, looked at me askew. It means looked at in a puzzled manner. You could think of it as someone tilting their head to see the person from a different angle.

Rarely, Askew can also refer to someone's first name.