Her plans went haywire..

Her plans to come back as the UP Chief Minister went haywire after the election defeat.

In order to improve spoken English skills, keep on at it continuously. Read cool stuff, listen to news and talk to friends who will help you.

In this post, we take yet another step towards better English communication and discuss the phrase, “Go haywire”.

Now, that’s one phrase you will surely come across at least once if you read newspapers for any two days continuously. It’s a frequently used phrase with a simple meaning – to go wrong, to go kaput.

So, if you made plans to go watch a movie with friends but at the last moment, you did not get the tickets, your plans have gone haywire.

If your company planned to give everyone a good raise but then was hit by recession, those plans would go haywire.

Going haywire means – गड़बड़ हो जाना or चौपट हो जाना.

Let’s take some examples:

1. The enemy captured the heights and had setup guard posts on all possible approaches. However, their plans went haywire because of the daredevilry by Indian soldiers. They climbed up sheer cliff surfaces and attacked from places the enemy couldn’t have imagined.
2. His plans to settle in the US went haywire when his visa was cancelled in the aftermath of 9/11.
3. He planned to contest the Loksabha election next time but his plans went haywire with his arrest in the underwear scam.
4. My laptop’s gone haywire. I tried every trick I knew but haven’t been able to get it to work. My boss will kill me.

Use it to mean something behaving in a crazy or haphazard way – it could be a machine or a plan.

Some more examples:

1. Their plans went haywire because they did not monitor their progress periodically.
2. Things were fine till the old man headed the company. However, once his son took over, everything went haywire. They couldn’t pay salaries and were flooded with court cases.