How to Use cockeyed in a Sentence

cockeyed

adjective
  • The windows of the house look cockeyed.
  • Where did you get those cockeyed ideas?
  • She is full of cockeyed optimism.
  • The small Malevich, of cockeyed red and black squares on white, elates.
    — Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 21 Dec. 2020
  • David, the oldest at 6, wearing a cockeyed cap, had something to say.
    — Bryce Miller, San Diego Union-Tribune, 25 Jan. 2025
  • Beside the small store was a cockeyed shipping container meant for cold storage.
    — Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News, 24 Sep. 2022
  • Put lid back on slightly cockeyed and crank heat again until second side is browned, 2–3 minutes.
    — Claire Saffitz, Bon Appetit, 3 Oct. 2017
  • The situations aren’t the same, but there is a cockeyed parallel.
    — Nick Canepa, sandiegouniontribune.com, 30 May 2017
  • This seemingly insignificant change sent the craft along its cockeyed path.
    — Maya Wei-Haas, Smithsonian, 9 Jan. 2017
  • That’s important, because ads are what makes this cockeyed caravan go.
    — John Rennie, IEEE Spectrum, 31 May 2011
  • To be fair, though, Biden has often veered into cockeyed optimism whether an election was near or not.
    — Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, 25 Sep. 2022
  • But even to the cockeyed optimist, did six sacks feel plausible Sunday night?
    — Andrew Callahan, Boston Herald, 12 Jan. 2026
  • Santos was elected by cockeyed voters with his cheating, lying and posing.
    — Voice Of The People, New York Daily News, 21 Feb. 2024
  • The roads have been laid cockeyed to the coast and are interrupted by a handful of lagoons that separate the town’s three main districts.
    — Wyatt Williams, Harper's Magazine, 17 Aug. 2021
  • The turn-signal lever, pivoting on an east-west axis, is wonderfully cockeyed, too.
    — Larry Griffin, Car and Driver, 11 Apr. 2023
  • What results is a kind of cockeyed mystery not at all about whodunnit but about why these two lovers felt compelled to resort to violence and lies.
    — Scott Tobias, Vulture, 14 Apr. 2024
  • But Chickie is obstinate in his cockeyed optimism, even when he’s being shot at in a foxhole with no weapon.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 13 Sep. 2022
  • The cockeyed miscreant and stand-out basketball player was at least a full foot taller than me, dumb as a box of bullfrogs, and had breath that smelled like a sewage plant.
    — Goldie Taylor, Rolling Stone, 12 Feb. 2023
  • Sooner or later, the long, hard hours in the studio had a way of turning even cockeyed optimists into pragmatists.
    — Jed Perl, The New York Review of Books, 7 Mar. 2019
  • His right hand shakes, his arm is weak and his posture in the saddle has become cockeyed, yet his idea of taking care of himself is consulting a horse doctor.
    — Joe Morgenstern, WSJ, 30 Dec. 2021
  • How will the last cockeyed optimist in popular culture deal with the desolation of a husband’s death?
    — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 7 Feb. 2025
  • Democrats these days make Cassandra from the Trojan War seem like a cockeyed optimist.
    — Walter Shapiro, The New Republic, 16 Aug. 2021
  • For that bit of cockeyed optimism, NASA has history on its side.
    — Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 15 Apr. 2022
  • And Cain and guitarist Neal Schon appear to have remained among the cockeyed optimists.
    — Chris Willman, Variety, 20 Feb. 2026
  • Her painful and cockeyed attempts to help Benny will resonate with anyone who ever parented a teenager.
    — Mary Ann Gwinn, Los Angeles Times, 23 Sep. 2021
  • The man is thoughtful and appealing, but his account is riddled with cockeyed inconsistencies.
    — Joe Morgenstern, WSJ, 2 Aug. 2018
  • All of this goes into Vaughn’s cockeyed pop-culture Cuisinart (much as henchmen go into Poppy’s meat grinder).
    — Gary Thompson, Philly.com, 20 Sep. 2017
  • To its credit, Stranger Things 3 approaches mall culture from a cockeyed perspective.
    — Darren Franich, EW.com, 4 July 2019
  • Miriam’s brother picked up a reindeer calf that had tucked itself sleepily between the fence and ground, rump out, and carefully carried it, legs cockeyed, inside the gates.
    — Juliana Hanle, Scientific American, 18 Nov. 2019
  • Gunn the cockeyed empathetic optimist didn’t make his public debut until the first Guardians of the Galaxy.
    — Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture, 31 Oct. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cockeyed.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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