screwy

comparative screwier · comparative more screwy · superlative screwiest · superlative most screwy

1. informalCrazy; silly; ridiculous

   That's a screwy idea; I am not going to fly all the way to Antarctica just to see a penguin!

   2 more examples

   Pretend it never happened. The insurance business is completely screwy now. You know they’ve reintroduced the death penalty for insurance company directors?

   1992, Douglas Adams, chapter 13, in Mostly Harmless (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), page 118

   Now, you don't actually have to have another printer in order to add another printer. This might sound a bit screwy on my part, but it is true.

   2005, Rickford Grant, Linux Made Easy: The Official Guide to Xandros 3 for Everyday Users, San Francisco: No Starch Press, →ISBN, page 155

   Synonyms: 5150, bananas, barking, barking mad, fey, buggish, buggy, bughouse

2. archaicinformalTipsy; slightly drunk.

   Screwy [skroo'i], adj. mean ; stingy ; parsimonious. Alto, slightly intoxicated.

   [1877, Edward Peacock, A glossary of words used in the wapentakes of Manley and Corringham, London: Trubner & Co., page 120, English Dialect Society

   1 more example

   "A tipsy man," said Spearman, "is generally noisy ; and I confess I was screwy on Wednesday."

   1868, Memorials of a theological college., London: Houlston & Wright, page 9

   Synonyms: Adrian Quist, adrip, aled up, all mops and brooms, arseholed, a sheet in the wind, a sheet in the wind's eye, bedrunken

3. archaicExacting; extortionate; close.
4. archaicWorthless.

   I saw my hearty out of the yard, with his pink peeping out of his Macintosh, on his screwy old black horse, and I heard from my fair waiter that he had been vaunting that he would lick us all into fits.

   1840 March 28, Hal of the West, “Brilliant run with the Puckeridge hounds”, in The Sporting Magazine, volume XX, number 119, page 383

   Synonyms: bastardly, blown, cacky, chaffy, cocking, crapalicious, cruddy, cullionly