out of true
- idiom
- Specialized
:
desalineado
- If a wheel is out of true, it can cause uneven wear on the tires.
- out of true wheel
- slightly out of true
- went out of true
Examples
-
That's pretty good out of true, but it's not stopping anymore.
-
I could buy an old Sears lathe way out of true and make it sing, but that's from thousands of hours of using lathe.
-
The technical compartment was as empty as the rest of the ship, though the buckled floorplates and broken screens betrayed that the frame had been twisted out of true.
Fiction book (1990) -
The bicycle couldn't ride smoothly because the back wheel was out of true.
-
During the inspection, we found that the frame was out of true, affecting its performance.
Synonyms
30
7.5
Not working properly or behaving in the usual way
7
7.5
Not straight or level and a little strange
1
5.6
Not straight or level so parts do not fit
1
6.8
Not placed at the expected position in memory, causing errors or slow access
Antonyms
How True
Surface Forms
Morphology
out + of + true
The meaning is directly derivable from the productive English pattern 'out of' (indicating absence or not in a given state) plus 'true' used in the sense 'aligned/level', so a learner who knows both constituents can infer 'not properly aligned'. Although the phrase is somewhat technical or less frequent, its composition follows a regular, cross-linguistically common pattern and is therefore understandable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
The expression out of true comes from old builders and wheel-makers, where true meant 'straight' or 'correct'. If something was out of true, like a wheel or a wall, it did not sit straight and would wobble or not fit properly, so today it means 'not properly aligned or level'.