English

Alternative forms

• cock-eyed (esp. UK)

Adjective

cockeyed ‎(comparative more cockeyed, superlative most cockeyed)

1. (US) Having both eyes oriented inward.
2. (US) Crooked or askew.
   • 1950, Langston Hughes, Simple Speaks His Mind, Chapter 12, in The Early Simple Stories, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Volume 7, edited by Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper, University of Missouri Press, 2002, p. 60-61,

     This morning I paid seventy cents for two little old dried-up slivers of bacon and one cockeyed egg.

3. (US, informal) Absurd, silly, or stupid; usually used in reference to ideas rather than people.
   • 1938, George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, Chapter 3,

     As time went on, and the desultory rifle-fire rattled among the hills, I began to wonder with increasing scepticism whether anything would ever happen to bring a bit of life, or rather a bit of death, into this cock-eyed war.

   I'm not going to go along with your cockeyed plot.

4. Drunk.
   • 1934, Sinclair Lewis, Work of Art, New York: P.F. Collier & Son, Chapter 12, p. 166,

     In the private office he said, "Mr. Barrow, I was going to quit." ¶ "Don't do that, son! You're the only executive I've got that isn't cockeyed all the time! […] "

Synonyms

• See also Wikisaurus:drunk