Askew

 WORD OF THE DAY

askew / adjective / uh-SKYOO

Definition
1a: out of line
1b: at an angle

Examples
"Papers were askew, someone had helped themselves to a snack in the kitchen and the suspect's prints were discovered in the fireplace. Worse yet, the culprit, a squirrel, was still in the house."
— CBC News (Canada), 22 Aug. 2020

If there are tree branches askew across a path, it’s probably not the right one.
— Paighten Harkins, The Salt Lake Tribune, 18 July 202

Did You Know?
Askew was formed simply by attaching the prefix a- (meaning "in [such] a state or condition") to skew.
The latter comes from Anglo-French eschiver, meaning "to escape or avoid."