out of order
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
not functioning properly
Literally: outside of the expected sequence
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
It'll be out of order then though
‘ Oliver,’ said Stu after a while, ‘ you're way out of order.
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. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “out of order” mean?
not functioning properly Literally: outside of the expected sequence
Is “out of order” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.
What is the closest equivalent?
“cọc cạch” (Tiếng Việt) — near equivalent.