out of joint

out of joint

1. (anatomy) dislocated

   I fell over and put my shoulder out of joint

2. Disordered, out of control, chaotic.
   • c. 1600, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5,

     The time is out of joint. O cursed spite

     That ever I was born to set it right!

   • 1866, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, Chapter 31,

     Her stepmother had whimsical moods; and if Cynthia displeased her, she would oppress Molly with small kindnesses and pseudo-affection. Or else everything was wrong, the world was out of joint, and Molly had failed in her mission to set it right, and was to be blamed accordingly.

3. Not in harmony, in step or in line (with something).
   • 1933, Robert Byron, First Russia, Then Tibet, London: Macmillan, Part I, Chapter 5, p. 71,

     While the Kremlin at Moscow exhales a paradoxical sympathy with this renewal of old tradition, Leningrad seems out of joint with Bolshevism and wears a sad air, as though mourning for an interlude which is past.

• nose out of joint