wrong side out
English
Alternative forms
- the wrong side out
- wrong side before
- wrongside out, wrong-side out, wrong-side-out
Adverb
wrong side out (not comparable)
- Of a garment, etc, having its inner or hidden side on the outside and vice versa.
- 1883, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], Life on the Mississippi, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, OCLC 1166352534:
- We all struggled frantically into our clothes, […] getting them wrong-side-out and upside-down, as a rule.
- 1970, Donald Harington, Lightning Bug:
- She began to remove her sweaty clothes, but noticed for the first time that she had her chambray shirt on wrongside out.
-
- (figuratively) Reversed, changed diametrically, by analogy with a garment that is wrong side out.
- c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act IV, scene ii]:
- When I inform'd him, then he call'd me sot, And told me I had turn'd the wrong side out.
-
Synonyms
- (having its inner side on the outside): inside out
- (reversed, changed diametrically): See also Thesaurus:vice versa
See also
- back to front
- upside down
- wrong way round