Definition of "kilter"

[T]hey are either round-shouldered, knock-kneed, bow-legged, or parrot-toed; some are also badly cross-eyed. It seems as if they can see two different ways at the same time. Jack says they are lop-sided and out of kilter altogether.

1890, Charles Erskine, chapter V, in Twenty Years before the Mast: […], Boston, Mass.: Published by the author, page 72

[H]e lived on tinned tomatoes, beef embalmed and sourdough bread, / On rusty beans and bacon furred with mould; / His stomach’s out of kilter and his system full of lead, / But it's over, and his poke is full of gold.

1909, Robert W[illiam] Service, “The Man from Eldorado”, in Ballads of a Cheechako, Toronto, Ont.: William Briggs, part I, stanza 2, page 71