kilter.
Chiefly in out of kilter: (good) condition, form, or order; fettle.
Meaning & usage
Chiefly in out of kilter: (good) condition, form, or order; fettle.
not in kilter
Where this word comes from
A variant of dialectal kelter (“good condition, order”), of unknown origin; possibly related to kilt (“to gather up (skirts) around the body”) (cognate with Danish kilte (“to tuck”)), or Scots kilt (“proper way of doing something, knack”) (probably from kilt (“a slope; a tilt”), possibly a variant of English tilt). In the 19th century, kelter was the more common form in the United Kingdom, while kilter was more common in the United States. Due to the influence of the latter, kilter is now the more prevalent form in all English varieties.
A hand of playing cards which is useless.
Where this word comes from
Probably a variant of dialectal kelter (“odds and ends; litter, rubbish”); further etymology unknown.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.