Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
off-key \off-key\ adj. & adv. Deviating from the proper pitch; -- of a musical note or series of notes; as, an off-key note; to sing off-key.
Syn: false, sour.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. 1 (context music English) pitched inaccurately either above or below the correct note 2 (context by extension English) not harmonious, or out of accord
WordNet
Wikipedia
Off-key is musical content that is not at the expected frequency or pitch period, either with respect to some absolute reference frequency, or in a ratiometric sense (i.e. through removal of exactly one degree of freedom, such as the frequency of a keynote), or pitch intervals not well-defined in the ratio of small whole numbers.
The term may also refer to a person or situation being out of step with what is considered normal or appropriate.
A single note deliberately played or sung off-key can be called an "off-note." It is sometimes used the same way as a blue note in jazz.
Usage examples of "off-key".
When they passed into a corridor secured even from her, she began to grow intrigued, and more easily ignored the off-key singing of the jester, who was blasphemously describing in ancient octameter certain activities of the goddess Yun-Harla of which Nen Yim-thankfully-had never heard.
Some larger, more animallike creatures sat on the heavier limbs and moaned off-key like abandoned puppies.
Jeremiah was brought to the overcrowded jail filled, not with angry miners, but drunken men clodhopping and singing in off-key voices.
While the world still was reeling and his hammock was swaying as if slung on board a storm-lashed ship at sea, one of the larger cannoneither the ten-pounder demiculverin or one of the three eight-pounder sakersroared close by, while the guard-bugler began to wind his horn in an off-key rendition of first the Assembly and then the Call to Arms.
Saint had felt before in all manner of circumstances when something was micrometrically off-key and his senses were busy delivering messages to his understanding which that partly instinct-driven system refused to accept as making a wholly convincing picture.
Rosselin-Metadi whistled an off-key tune through her front teeth as she took a leisurely return walk down the Allee to her ship.
As she approached with Hiram Black they seemed to be breasting their way upstream through waves of sound, the crash of drums, throbbing, wailing bagpipes, mixed with off-key songs from intoxicated male baritones.
A music box was jangling and somebody in a corner was singing an old sea chantey in a loud, off-key voice.
Security guys, that spends half his shift down at the Life and then goes up and down the streetlet all night playing with his service baton and singing sea chanties off-key, that's just impressively qualified to Come In to AA with them.
From down below the window, where the beverage room empties onto the street, come snatches of off-key song, shouts, laughter.
At first the school had been full of sounds: slamming locker doors, the clackety-clack of Mrs Thomas's typewriter in the office, the slightly off-key choral renditions of the glee club upstairs, the nervous thud-thud-thud of basketballs from the gym and the scrooch and thud of sneakers as players drove toward the baskets or cut turns on the polished wood floor.
Thomas's typewriter in the office, the slightly off-key choral renditions of the glee club upstairs, the nervous thud-thud-thud of basketballs from the gym and the scrooch and thud of sneakers as players drove toward the baskets or cut turns on the polished wood floor.
I was like a baby hearing some horrible off-key chord of music played by a symphony orchestra.
Their eyes met, hotly, briefly, before she plunked out an off-key chord, dismissing him as if he weren't risking limb and life by charging into this Harlem dive to rescue her from God-only-knew what gruesome fate.
A pang of disappointment, like a slightly off-key chord, rippled through her and vanished.