When you put up a picture and it isn’t quite straight, how would you describe this? The go-to term for 46% of our respondents was skew-whiff (or skee-whiff for some people in and around Staffordshire). The words lopsided and askew also seem to be popular descriptions of this common complaint across the country, with no ties to any particular region. Meanwhile, younger respondents, under the age of 34, tend to use a range of words, the most common being wonky.
The likes of cob-wobbly, sky-wobbled and wee-wub have shown a marked decline in usage over the decades, and are reported by only a handful of speakers in our survey. The same can be said for cockeyed in Yorkshire and on the scunt in Birmingham. However, if you find yourself in East Anglia, it’s still worth keeping your eyes peeled for any pictures that might be on the huh, as the phrase survives across all generations.
