willy nilly
See also: willy-nilly
English
Adverb
willy nilly (comparative more willy nilly, superlative most willy nilly)
- Alternative form of willy-nilly
- 1868, [Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe, translated by Arthur Duke Coleridge, Egmont. A Tragedy. […], London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, act II, page 40:
- Whenever I see a long handsome neck, willy nilly, the thought will come uppermost—What a capital neck for carving! Those cursed executions! One can't rid one's mind of them.
- 1948 August, Aldous Huxley, “The Script”, in Ape and Essence, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, →OCLC, page 154:
- And, while he sleeps, the indwelling Compassion preserves him, willy nilly, from the suicide which, in his waking hours, he has tried so frantically hard to commit.
Anagrams
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.