Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adverb Whether desired or not.
- adverb Without order or plan; haphazardly.
- adjective Being or occurring whether desired or not.
- adjective Disordered; haphazard.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Will he or will he not; will ye or will ye not; willing or unwilling. See
nill , will - Vacillating; shilly-shallying.
- Also
nilly-willy .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adverb Whether desired or not.
- adverb idiomatic Without regard for consequences or the will of those affected.
- adverb Seemingly at random,
haphazardly
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adverb without having a choice
- adverb in a random manner
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Then they proceed to throw the name around willy-nilly, with Rudolph mixing in "prosecco."
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So long as he walked four miles an hour, he pumped that blood, willy-nilly, to the surface; but now it ebbed away and sank down into the recesses of his body.
To Build a Fire 2010
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The missions and objectives were never clearly defined, and the self-parodying "search for WMD" in Iraq (lampooned by the president himself at a subsequent press dinner) was a willy-nilly adventure in comic relief -- to wit, Donald Rumsfeld's classic remark that "we know where they are: they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat."
Randall Amster: WikiLessons: War Is a Joke, But It Isn't Funny Randall Amster 2010
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It gives us a plausible look at time travel and its potential consequences without having characters popping around through time changing events willy-nilly with no consideration for logic or continuity.
20 « March « 2009 « Axiom's Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy 2009
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The missions and objectives were never clearly defined, and the self-parodying "search for WMD" in Iraq (lampooned by the president himself at a subsequent press dinner) was a willy-nilly adventure in comic relief -- to wit, Donald Rumsfeld's classic remark that "we know where they are: they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat."
Randall Amster: WikiLessons: War Is a Joke, But It Isn't Funny Randall Amster 2010
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He lay on the floor in a loose heap, rolling willy-nilly with every roll of the Elsinore.
CHAPTER XXXVIII 2010
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"When you go down this road and you start to just willy-nilly - as I believe President Carter has - throwing race out there, you diminish real instances of racism that needs to be addressed."
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He abruptly ceased, for at that moment, to enforce his remark, he had placed his hand on Planchette, and at that moment his hand had been seized, as by a paroxysm, and sent dashing, willy-nilly, across the paper, writing as the hand of an angry person would write.
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Constitutional head of all military in the US (and a civilian for a reason) ... should just let the military do whatever it wants willy-nilly.
McChrystal: Finding bin Laden vital to beating al Qaeda 2009
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The central organizing principle of every single street in America is that people will not start pushing each other, willy-nilly, into traffic.
oroboros commented on the word willy-nilly
Alternate definition: adj., impotent. --Mensa word list winner 2006
March 2, 2007
catkisses commented on the word willy-nilly
Reminds me of that old Peter Pan play "I'll send for Tiger Lily! And I'll Send for Peter Pan, we'll be there Willy Nilly!"
September 5, 2008
madmouth commented on the word willy-nilly
will he, nill he is a commonly cited antecedent to this phrase, but there's also will I, nill I:
Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut.
Moby Dick I-LXVII by Melville, Herman
June 4, 2009