willy nilly

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

1. Alternative form of willy-nilly
   • 1868, [Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe, Arthur Duke Coleridge, transl., Egmont. A Tragedy. […], London: Chapman & Hall, […], OCLC 1156446364, 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, Aldous Huxley, “The Script”, in Ape and Essence, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers Publishers, OCLC 248417, 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.

• nilly-willy