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This picture shows a person doing a head stand.

Headstand

The person's legs are vertical, but her jeans are not. They are off to the right a little bit. I describe this as follows.

Her legs are straight, but her jeans are _____.

What should I put in the "____" part?

I have come up with 2 possible words:

crooked - bent or twisted out of shape or out of place

I mean the jeans are kind of "out of place", right?

The other word is

tilted - moved or caused to move into a sloping position

The jeans are in a "sloping position", right?

What is the best word to put in there?

I have also considered "lean", as in "the leaning tower of Pisa". I don't really know which fits better.

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  • You deserve appreciation for including the picture in your question. A picture truly 'speaks a thousand words' and makes your question crystal clear.
    – English Student
    Commented Apr 21, 2017 at 21:58
  • I don’t have an answer but it does seem to me that most of those terms… tilted, leaning and a-skew… normally apply only to rigid objects and off-set should strictly refer to displacement, not orientation. Jeans being only semi-rigid puts them in something of a half-way house but isn’t it true that although they could, those terms don’t generally apply to amorphous things like strings?
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Commented May 14, 2017 at 13:59

3 Answers 3

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a·skew

əˈskyo͞o adverb & adjective not in a straight or level position. "the door was hanging askew on one twisted hinge"

(default result from Google search.)

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    Hello, codenoir. To avoid copyright infringement, quotes need to be correctly attributed.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 21, 2017 at 21:35
  • Askew (suggested above) is a good word for your purpose. In fact her feet are also askew relative to the vertical of the frame by a few degrees, while the jeans are askew by a few degrees more. The leaning tower of Pisa is askew by several degrees and apparently going another degree askew every century... "Askew" can also be used idiomatically as in "his depressed state made him feel that his whole life had gone badly askew." But why is the person doing a headstand? Because she can!
    – English Student
    Commented Apr 21, 2017 at 21:56
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Out of the two you gave crooked is the better word. By technical meaning, either apply but crooked is more associated with something being tilted in a bad way or in a way it isn't supposed to be. However, there are other words though that may apply better, such as 'askew' which seems to fit the image well.

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Offset

  1. placed away from a center line; off-center. (Random House)

You could also use off-center but I like offset better.

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