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willy nilly. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
willy nilly, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
willy nilly in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Adverb
willy nilly (comparative more willy nilly, superlative most willy nilly)
- 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.
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