Crossword clues for helter-skelter
helter-skelter
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Helter-skelter \Hel"ter-skel"ter\, adv. [An onomat?poetic word. Cf. G. holter-polter, D. holder de bolder.] In hurry and confusion; without definite purpose; irregularly. [Colloq.]
Helter-skelter have I rode to thee.
--Shak.
A wistaria vine running helter-skelter across the roof.
--J. C.
Harris.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
also helter skelter, 1590s, perhaps from skelte "to hasten, scatter hurriedly," with the first element there merely for the sake of rhyme. As an adjective from 1785.
Wiktionary
a. carelessly hurried and confused adv. In confused, disorderly haste n. 1 confusion or turmoil 2 (context British English) A helical fairground slide
WordNet
adj. lacking a visible order or organization [syn: chaotic]
with undue hurry and confusion; "a helter-skelter kind of existence with never a pause"; "a pell-mell dash for the train" [syn: pell-mell]
adv. haphazardly; "the books were piled up helter-skelter" [syn: every which way]
Usage examples of "helter-skelter".
Fitzgeorge, cleared the wood on the left in a very thorough manner, and soon the whole Fenian army were in a helter-skelter race out of Canada and back to American territory.
As Xanadu put the question, Margo stared from the corner where she had landed rather helter-skelter.
Several hundred other sky chariots are parked helter-skelter on the grass.
It was clear that the contents had just been heaped inside, helter-skelter, and all except the cameos and the pearls was a total loss.
We turned inland, away from the palace district, into a residential district where the houses of the rich, blank-fronted and courtyarded, mixed helter-skelter with the rush-roofed hovels of the poor.
In this way, the savage chivalry of the village to the number of five hundred, poured forth, helter-skelter, riding and running, with hideous yells and war-whoops, like so many bedlamites or demoniacs let loose.
Already he could see the disbanding of his mercenary troops, the beginning of that mad, wild flight to the coast, and down the steps of the molens his friends too were running helter-skelter, without thought of anything save of their own safety.
It was tall, over fifty feet, and she could see where it got its name: branches of uniform thickness grew in a spiral up and around the charcoal black trunk, like a helter-skelter.
All round the car, helter-skelter, tumbling, pushing, came Pierrots and Pierrettes, carrying lanthorns, and Harlequins bearing the torches.
They had wandered through the acts, tents and rides, he and she, talking small talk, passing comment on other people they passed, celebrating the refreshing absence of drones at the party, discussing the merits of whirligigs, shubblebubs, helter-skelters, ice-flumes, quittletraps, slicicles, boing-braces, airblows, tramplescups and bodyflaggers, and bemoaning the sheer pointlessness of inter-species funny-face competitions.
He also sees the pile of heaped-up arms, the broken metal, the rags and the mud, and through the interstices of the wooden steeps the booted feet of the mynheers running helter-skelter down.
From his window on the fourth floor the city rambled forever, built helter-skelter over the centuries.
He put the yearbooks back in their box helter-skelter and went on poking.