helter-skelter

English

Etymology

Likely onomatopoeic; with Middle English skelten ("to hasten"), or maybe related to Old High German skeltan (“scold”) from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kel- (“make noise, yell”), employed as a fossil word.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌhɛltɚˈskɛltɚ/
• IPA^(key): /ˌhɛltəˈskɛltə/
• Hyphenation: hel‧ter-‧skel‧ter

Adverb

helter-skelter (comparative more helter-skelter, superlative most helter-skelter)

1. In confused, disorderly haste.
   • 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter II, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC, page 21:

     But the butterflies were dead. A whiff of rotten eggs had vanquished the pale clouded yellows which came pelting across the orchard and up Dods Hill and away on to the moor, now lost behind a furze bush, then off again helter-skelter in a broiling sun.

   • 1998, Deborah J. Bennett, Randomness, Harvard University Press, p. 104

     Pellets, once released from the funnel, would bounce helter-skelter, left or right, against the pins […] to ultimately gather in the lower compartments in a pile which resembles a normal curve.

Translations

in confused, disorderly haste

• Bulgarian: объркано (bg) (obǎrkano), без ред (bez red)
• Dagbani: balibali
• Danish: hulter til bulter
• Dutch: holderdebolder (nl)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• German: holterdiepolter (de), Hals über Kopf (de)
• Hungarian: nyakra-főre (hu), hanyatt-homlok (hu)
• Japanese: めちゃめちゃ (mechamecha)
• Portuguese: a trouxe-mouxe

Adjective

helter-skelter (comparative more helter-skelter, superlative most helter-skelter)

1. Carelessly hurried and confused
   • 1994, Warren Bargad, "To Write the Lips of Sleepers": The Poetry of Amir Gilboa (page 232)

     Although his existential thoughts seem to have been tossed onto the page in helter-skelter fashion, what Gilboa does here is to open his mind and heart to the reader through verbal jaggedness and poetic unneatness.

Translations

Carelessly hurried and confused

• Bulgarian: объркан (bg) (obǎrkan)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• German: holterdiepolter (de)
• Plautdietsch: droslich

See also

• willy-nilly
• pell-mell

Noun

helter-skelter (countable and uncountable, plural helter-skelters)

1. confusion or turmoil
2. (British) A helical fairground slide

Translations

confusion or turmoil

• Bulgarian: безпорядък (bg) m (bezporjadǎk), суматоха (bg) f (sumatoha)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}