galley-west

adverb

Informal. into a state of unconsciousness, confusion, or disarray (usually used in the phrase to knock galley-west ).

adjective

Northern U.S. lopsided; cockeyed.

Origin:
1870–75, Americanism; alteration of British dialect collywest

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
Cite This Source

Link To galley-west

Collins

World English Dictionary

galley-west

—*adv*
	slang chiefly (US) into confusion, inaction, or unconsciousness (esp in the phrase knock (someoneorsomething) galley-west)

[C19: from English dialect colly-west awry, perhaps from Collyweston, a village in Northamptonshire]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

00:10

Galley-west is always a great word to know.

So is flibbertigibbet. Does it mean:

a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

the offspring of a zebra and a donkey.

LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

Matching Quote

"He had seen the end of an era, the sunset of the pioneer. He had come upon it when already its glory was nearly spent. So in the buffalo times a traveller used to come upon the embers of a hunter's fire on the prairies, after the hunter was up and gone; the coals would be trampled out, but the ground was warm, and the flattened grass where he had slept and where his pony had grazed, told the story.
This was the very end of the road-making West; the men who had put plains and mountains under the iron harness were old; some were poor, and even the successful ones were hunting for rest and a brief reprieve from death. It was already gone, that age; nothing could ever bring it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men had seen in the air and followed,—these he had caught in a kind of afterglow in their own faces,—and this would always be his."

-Willa Cather

Want galley-west ad-free? Click here!

galley-west

gal·ley-west