wrong side out
adv1
Of a garment, etc, having its inner or hidden side on the outside and vice versa.
- We all struggled frantically into our clothes, […] getting them wrong-side-out and upside-down, as a rule.1883, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], Life on the Mississippi, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, →OCLC:
- She began to remove her sweaty clothes, but noticed for the first time that she had her chambray shirt on wrongside out.1970, Donald Harington, Lightning Bug:
2
Figuratively Reversed, changed diametrically, by analogy with a garment that is wrong side out.
- When I inform'd him, then he call'd me sot, And told me I had turn'd the 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]:
- Synonyms
- inside out
- Related terms
- back to front, upside down, wrong way round