Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Informal Very unconventional or unusual: manic, off-the-wall creativity; off-the-wall humor.
- adj. Informal Exhibiting bizarre behavior; crazy: their off-the-wall friends.
Wiktionary
- adj. idiomatic Wildly unconventional; bizarre; absurd.
- adj. idiomatic Greatly inappropriate.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. conspicuously or grossly unconventional or unusual
Etymologies
- Perhaps from baseball or other games played with a ball, alluding to unpredictable bounces. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Ricky Santorum, he who lost his Senate seat because of off-the-wall statements and behaviors ....”
Scoring another endorsement, Rubio shrugs off Crist speculation
“My new favorite web find (thanks to SuperPunch) is a Flickr gallery of CubeDudes, a collection of Lego figures that resemble (among other folks) some science fictional characters, both common and off-the-wall.”
“After all, the logical games and off-the-wall situations presented by Lewis Carroll in both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There parallel much of the nonsense language and narrative dissociation one sometimes feels living in this first decade of the twenty-first century.”
“This guy is as off-the-wall in his own way as Ray Lafferty used to be.”
“There's one kid there that's got a rock element about him that's totally off-the-wall," Tyler said.”
“At the time, prior to any Watergate revelations, he made what seemed to be an utterly off-the-wall prediction.”
The Huffington Post: Dan Dorfman: Stars Signal More Political Uheaval
“Scene-stealer Sherri Shepherd rose to the occasion as Tracy's wife Angie, who is just as off-the-wall and out of touch with reality as her crazy hubby.”
2011's Best Episodes: Game of Thrones' Shocking Beheading, Walking Dead's Discovery
“And in Kutcher, the show's producers have found another willing party for those off-the-wall antics — including, the actors hint, a touch of nudity.”
Exclusive: Ashton Kutcher, Jon Cryer and Angus T. Jones on the New Two and a Half Men
“My father, a normally serious state trooper, became so boisterous and off-the-wall he was forced to take some time off.”
“It's 18 months since Tim Key won the 2009 Edinburgh Comedy Award for The Slutcracker, an off-the-wall but entirely masterful melange of comic poetry, surreal video and peculiar audience interaction.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘off-the-wall’.
-
Hyphen Nation
Terms with multiple hyphens, such as rent-a-crowd. Not intended to be a see-how-many-words-one-can-string-together-with-hyphens-used-adjectively sort of list.
much-talked-of, vis-à-vis, tête-à-tête, rope-a-dope, will-o'-the-wisp, dick-a-tuesday, will-in-the-wisp, jack-o'-lantern, jack-with-a-lantern, ear-to-ear, whack-a-mole, no-man's-land and 205 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for off-the-wall.
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.