Helter-skelter
Suggest a CorrectionMeaning
In confused haste or disorder, without an orderly plan, sequence or arrangement. Works as an adverb, adjective or noun for disorder. In British English it may also name the tall spiral fairground slide, a separate later application of the phrase. Regional use: Late-sixteenth-century English; now international, with a later British amusement noun.
Origin
Helter-skelter is recorded by 1593, but its formation is uncertain. It may be a rhyming reduplication influenced by a Middle English verb such as skelte, meaning to hurry or scatter, or it may have arisen as an imitative sound pattern whose force came from repetition. The evidence supports a late-sixteenth-century English expression, not a confident derivation from one identifiable incident or speaker. The British amusement-park helter-skelter, a spiral slide around a tower, is a much later noun and should not be read back into the idiom's origin.
Research Sources
Variants
- In helter-skelter fashion
Usage Examples
- The evacuation began in helter-skelter confusion when the second alarm sounded.
- Receipts lay helter-skelter across the desk instead of in the audit folders.
- They rushed helter-skelter toward the platform as the last train arrived.