"Higgledy-piggledy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... catalogued mine, I have just put them down "higgledy-piggledy," as we used to say when we were children. J——'s having to work in town, too far to come home except for an occasional week-end, the neighbors' dogs, servants, Bermuda grass, tenants, ants, the eccentricities of an adobe road during the rains, and the lapses of the delivery ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... health: but you must not go far from the wagon, for I'm a fidget; and I have got the care of you now, you know, for want of a better. Come, Ucatella; you must ride with me, and help me sort the things; they are all higgledy-piggledy." So those two got into the wagon through the back curtains. Then the Kafir driver flourished his kambok, or long whip, in the air, and made it crack like a pistol, and the horses reared, and the oxen started and slowly bored ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... fragments. References to old ballads are numerous in the Elizabethan plays. Percy devoted the second book of his first series to "Ballads that Illustrate Shakspere." In the seventeenth century a few ballads were printed entire in poetic miscellanies entitled "Garlands," higgledy-piggledy with pieces of all kinds. Professor Child enumerates nine ballad collections before Percy's. The only ones of any importance among these were "A Collection of Old Ballads" (Vols I. and II. in 1723, Vol III. In 1725), ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... deranged &c. 61; topsy-turvy &c. (inverted) 218; shapeless &c. 241; disjointed, out of joint. troublous[obs3]; riotous &c. (violent) 173. complex &c. 59a. Adv. irregularly &c. adj.; by fits, by fits and snatches, by fits and starts; pellmell; higgledy-piggledy; helter-skelter, harum-scarum; in a ferment; at sixes and sevens, at cross-purposes; upside down &c. 218. Phr. the cart before the horse; <gr/hysteron proteron/gr>[Grk][Grk]; chaos is come again; "the wreck of matter and the crush of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... scattered higgledy-piggledy, pell-mell, through the clay, so as to give it a highly ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... be? The clock was ticking like a heavy chap's footstep downstairs in the kitchen. It was deathly quiet everywhere. Now she would lie and wait until the clock struck, so that she might know how long it would be before it grew light. Her eyes were so tired and all sorts of things were walking higgledy-piggledy ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... "Higgledy-piggledy, here I lie Picked and plucked, and put in a pie; My first is snapping, snarling, growling; ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... "bitin'" order, on his shoulder. On a sudden, with no other warning than a rough chorus of growls at his very heels, he found himself set upon by a whole family of bears, who spying him, as he passed unawares too near the door of their domestic den, had sallied out, higgledy-piggledy, to give the intruder battle. To step to one side and with the bullet already in his rifle lay the old he-bear, who led the onslaught, dead on the spot was easy enough; so would it have been as easy to dispatch the old she-bear, had she but allowed him time to ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Zouaves repaired to their tents, and proceeded to pack their clothes away out of the lockers. They were not very scientific packers, and, in fact, the usual mode of doing the business was to ram everything higgledy-piggledy into their valises, and then jump on them until they consented to come together and be locked. Presently Jerry came trotting down with a donkey cart used on the farm, and under his directions the boys folded ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... through the midnight hour, backwards and forwards, in the half-open door; and now the Draug, and now the men, had the most of the boy on their side of the doorway. All at once the Draug let go, so that the whole crew fell higgledy-piggledy backwards on to the floor. Then they found that the boy was dead; it was only then that the Draug had let ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... "Why, by rolling higgledy-piggledy over itself of course," said Lewis, flippantly, as he came up and sat down on the end of the sofa, being out of humour with himself and everybody in consequence of having utterly failed to gain the attention of Nita Horetzki, although he had made unusually earnest ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne |
