adverb

• Askew; awry.

  ‘The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘For once, the best-laid economic plans of the meticulous Chancellor of the Exchequer went agley.’
  • ‘A delightful event, but things gang aft agley when a certain mayor cracks wise about a certain nation's reputation for thriftiness and predilection for men in ‘skirts.’’
  • ‘This is what the stretcher guy was planning on happening, but as the poet Burns is wont to say, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley (well, he's dead now, but he did used to say it).’
  • ‘Sometimes we fail simply because we are poor, dumb, fallible, feckless human beings whose best-laid schemes gang aft agley.’

  Synonyms

  lopsided, unsymmetrical, crooked