pellmell


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pell-mell

also pell·mell  (pĕl′mĕl′)
adv.
1. In a jumbled, confused manner; helter-skelter.
2. In frantic disorderly haste; headlong: "I went to work pell-mell, blotted several sheets of paper with choice floating thoughts" (Washington Irving).

[French pêle-mêle, from Old French pesle mesle, probably reduplication of mesle, imperative of mesler, to mix; see meddle.]

pell′-mell′ adj. & n.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in classic literature ?
"Very well; with all those pieces of lava lengthened like rockets, it resembles an immense game of spelikans thrown pellmell. There wants but the hook to pull them out one by one."
The boys made a dash of it for the gangway platform, swimming the fastest strokes they knew, pellmell, floundering and splashing, fright in their faces, clambering out with jumps and surges, any way to get out, lending one another a hand to safety, till all were strung along the gangway and peering down into the water.
He said that the pellmell increase of prices would worsen by "rushing" the shift to a federal form of government.
But for an unfortunate setback early that Sunday when the metal detectors bogged down and the pietistic rushed pellmell into the cordoned area, it would not be unreasonable to claim that public discipline contributed much to the Pope's successful visit to the Philippines.
The indictment is of our participation in the conquest/conversion mindset that sends us now as a species pellmell down the path to annihilation" [emphasis mine] (242).
Blair's pellmell pursuit of Middle England saw him sell his proud party's soul for a handful of magic beans and a fortnight in Berlusconi's villa.
"Like a ferocious bulletin from an alternate universe--tumbling, pellmell, brilliant and strange--comes this explosive and discomfiting fifth novel by Carolyn Chute.