Cockeyed means tilted, crooked, or not straight. When you hang a picture on the wall but it ends up slanted to one side, it's cockeyed. A hat sitting askew on someone's head is cockeyed. The word captures that slightly off-kilter, lopsided quality that makes something look wrong even if you can't immediately say why.

The word also describes ideas or plans that seem absurd or unlikely to work. If your friend proposes a cockeyed scheme to train squirrels to deliver messages between houses, you'd probably point out all the obvious problems with that plan. A cockeyed idea is impractical or unrealistic in a way that makes you shake your head, something that sounds foolish or poorly thought out.

You might hear someone say “That's the most cockeyed thing I've ever heard!” when they think a suggestion makes no sense. The word has a folksy, informal feel to it, like something your grandfather might say while straightening a crooked fence post or hearing about an overly complicated plan to solve a simple problem.