unglued
2
5.2
- adjective
- /ʌnˈɡluːd/
- Informal
:
desorganizado
- Her personal life fell apart, and everything seemed unglued after the breakup.
- come unglued
Examples
-
For much of the past year, it seemed that Chinese politics were on the edge of becoming unglued.
Blog text (19) -
First, should party organization continue to erode to the point that the little internal cohesion that currently exists completely comes unglued, the legislature could lose what little leverage it currently enjoys over the president, leaving the latter with increased powers.
Academic text (2000) -
Sit around these fans for half an hour, and it all comes unglued anyway.
Fiction book (1993) -
And then we have this other group where things are from a outcome point of view coming completely unglued, right?
-
The facts you argue for are coming unglued!
Blog text (2) -
The East-Pac credit deal is coming unglued.
-
The first two years were trips to the AFC Championship game, followed by a year of 8-8, where the team became unglued.
Blog text (2) -
Here, and throughout the Mediterranean, the ancient economy has come unglued as people with ambition abandon the rural village for the metropolis and leave the landscape to delaminate like rotting plywood.
Academic text (2008) -
And it seems very hard to argue that our political dialogue has not come profoundly unglued—sheesh, Reagan would be a centrist now, Nixon a liberal, Eisenhower a socialist!
Blog text (15) -
After the unexpected changes, the project plans became unglued and no longer made sense.
Antonyms
How Functional
Surface Forms
Morphology
unglued = glued (semi-transparent) = un + glue + ed
The negative prefix 'un-' negates 'glued' and the meaning 'fallen apart/failed' is a metaphorical extension from the literal physical separation.
Etymology
Unglued is un- 'not' plus glued from glue, so it literally means 'not stuck' or 'falling apart'. That picture of glue failing shows why we say a project or plan has gone unglued when it is no longer organized or working properly.