- crooked
- crooked, devious, oblique mean not straight or straightforward.Crooked may imply the presence of material curves, turns, or bends{
a crooked back
}{a crooked road
}{the crooked trunk of a tree
}In its frequent extended use it applies especially to practices (as fraud, cheating, or graft) involving marked departures from rectitude{crooked dealings
}{a crooked politician
}{crooked policies
}{they are a perverse and crooked generation— Deut 32:5
}Devious implies departure from a direct, appointed, regular, or fixed course and hence suggests wandering or errancy and, often, circuitousness{we sought with relief the empty roads of the fens, and, by devious routes, wound our way between golden buttercups and brown cattle— Lucas
}{he went by devious ways, a little proud of himself for knowing the shortcuts, through a building used as a thoroughfare from one street to another, through what had once been the churchyard of an ancient church— Archibald Marshall
}The term as applied to persons and their acts or practices usually implies unreliability and often trickiness or shiftiness{the devious policies of the adminis- tration
}{he had been a devious rascal— Bennett
}{the marks of the thoroughbred were simply not there. The man was blatant, crude, overly confidential, devious— Mencken
}Oblique implies a departure from the perpendicular or horizontal direction, or a slanting course{an oblique tower
}{an oblique sunbeam
}and in extended use suggests indirection or lack of perfect straightforwardness{an oblique glance
}{all censure of a man's self is oblique praise— Johnson
}{their rebellion was an act of oblique homage— Collet
}{people . . . who think that . . . the Japanese people are maddeningly oblique— Faubion Bowers
}Analogous words: *awry, askew: twisted, bended or bent (see corresponding verbs at CURVE): distorted, contorted, deformed, warped (see DEFORM): tortuous, *winding: corrupt, nefarious, iniquitous, *vicious: stealthy, furtive, underhand (see SECRET)Antonyms: straightContrasted words: *straightforward, aboveboard, forthright: *upright, honest, scrupulous, conscientious, honor-able, just
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
