I am probably showing my age, but the first thing that pops to mind when I see the term helter-skelter is the song of that title by The Beatles (see YouTube clip below).
Well, I also think of the murderer Charles Manson (ack!)... which also probably shows my age.
However, the phrase go way way back... many centuries, in fact.
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The definition from my copy of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Tenth edition) gives definitions for its use as a noun, an adjective, and an adverb.... take your choice!
- noun — 1. a disorderly confusion: turmoil; 2. a spiral slide around a tower at an amusement park (<--now I understand The Beatles song a little better!).
- adjective — 1. confusedly hurried: precipitate; 2. marked by a lack of order or plan: haphazard.
- adverb — 1. in undue haste, confusion, or disorder; 2. in a haphazard manner.
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| Helter-skelter! [By Steve F, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13743455] |
As for the years of first use? How about 1713 for the noun, 1785 for the adjectival form, and 1593 for the adverb!
I shouldn't be surprised, because now I also recall that Shakespeare used it... although I had to go digging to find out where (Henry IV, Part II).
The Phrase Finder has a nifty post on helter-skelter, which is sort-of, semi-related to harum-scarum, hurly-burly, and pell-mell.
Finally, as promised, here is your musical interlude, straight from '68.
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6 comments:
Oh my. Manson came to mind first, and I do believe it tied in with the Beatles' song.
Hi Liz!
I was always a little confused about the Beatles' song. I read a little more about it on Wikipedia... fascinating, actually! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helter_Skelter_(song)
Apparently Charles Manson was partly "inspired" by the song....
I always thought those rhyming phrases all meant the same thing: willy nilly, handy dandy, heebie jeebies, teeny weeny, mumbo jumbo (I'm running out) -- so that if you knew what one of the words meant, the other was just the same, and emphasized the first. :)
The repetition is part of the meaning. We don't do this in English much, but everyone knows the Hawaiian example of "wiki wiki" where repetition means "very" so wiki is fast, and wiki wiki is very fast.
Here, the sing-song, single variation supplies some connotation, from sarcasm to amplitude. Handy means something quite different from handy-dandy in its connotation. Mumbo jumbo is a bigger kind of nonsense than word salad, I think :)
In the dumbest thing I ever did department, I started reading the prosecutor's book about the case while babysitting two kids in a rambling old house out in the middle of nowhere. I hadn't seen a horror film at that point, but if I had I'd have known that's how they all start!
oops that Unknown is Mysti.
Hiya Mysti and Camille! :-)
The Phrase Finder article says it's all about the rhyming sound:
"...Neither helter nor skelter had any meaning in themselves. Like many word pairs of this sort (called rhyming reduplications), they only exist as part of the pair - although skelter was used alone later, but only as a shortened form of helter-skelter."
Rhyming reduplications! I've learned something new! :-)
And Mysti - Yikes! You couldn't start reading this on a sunny beach in Hawaii?? ;-)
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