out of sorts
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Feeling unwell or unhappy
Literally: not in order
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Indeed at first Kersal enjoyed the run of play and their half - time lead should have been more than 6 points, fly half Neil Pearson out of sorts, he missed 4 penalties.
Roger, you're out of sorts.
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.
Common questions
What does “out of sorts” mean?
Feeling unwell or unhappy Literally: not in order
Is “out of sorts” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.