English · Idiom Attested

out of kilter

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Out of harmony or balance.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Mất cân bằng hoặc hòa hợp

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

And if you have an increase in, in one year and the situation then throws it all out of kilter.

It only takes a small slippage for government revenue and spending forecasts to be thrown out of kilter.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Figurative class: Metaphor (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).

Common questions

What does “out of kilter” mean?

Out of harmony or balance.

Is “out of kilter” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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