The word for today on my Word-A-Day Calendar is “kilter,” and the author makes the kind of comment I associate with George Carlin, who wondered aloud about what ideas like “chalant,” would do for users of English.  Every use of “kilter” that is familiar is the notion that someone or something is out of it. 

I liked having the word land on my birthday because it gave me a chance to reflect that I am currently in kilter.  “Kilter” is a pretty loose notion.  It doesn’t mean that I can do all the things that I used to do and take pleasure in.  I am not out of kilter because I can no longer do those things.  It doesn’t mean that I still have the same needs I once had, still less that I can meet those needs in the same way I once did.  That doesn’t make me out of kilter, so far as today’s reflection on the word is concerned.

I would say a machine was in kilter if all the parts did what they needed to do, with the result that the machine did what I wanted it to do.  Depending on what kind of machine you would like to imagine, there could be something wrong with the system of imaging, the system of propulsion, or in the way it gets rid of waste products.  But if the thing that is wrong with any of those subsystems does not prevent it from doing what I want it to do, I would declare it to be “in kilter.”

As I think about it, I think of being “in kilter” as a measure of function.  It is not a survey of the subsystems to see if any of them can be improved, but a judgment about the system as a whole and whether it will hold up to the demands I need to place on it.  A bridge that will hold my weight as I cross is, by this measure, “in kilter,” however much may be wrong with it otherwise.

[1] If I owned a grocery, I would let it be known that I stored and sold “kilters,” so that I would put up a sign that we were out of them today.  That would be fun.