wrong side out

English

Alternative forms

• the wrong side out
• wrong side before
• wrongside out, wrong-side out, wrong-side-out

Adverb

wrong side out (not comparable)

1. Of a garment, etc, having its inner or hidden side on the outside and vice versa.
   • 1883, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], Life on the Mississippi, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, →OCLC:

     We all struggled frantically into our clothes, […] getting them wrong-side-out and upside-down, as a rule.

   • 1970, Donald Harington, Lightning Bug:

     She began to remove her sweaty clothes, but noticed for the first time that she had her chambray shirt on wrongside out.

2. (figuratively) Reversed, changed diametrically, by analogy with a garment that is wrong side out.
   • c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:

     When I inform'd him, then he call'd me sot, And told me I had turn'd the wrong side out.

Synonyms

• (having its inner side on the outside): inside out
• (reversed, changed diametrically): See also Thesaurus:vice versa

See also

• back to front
• upside down
• wrong way round