willy nilly

See also: willy-nilly

English

Adverb

willy nilly (comparative more willy nilly, superlative most willy nilly)

1. 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, 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

• nilly-willy