pell-mell

adverb

1
: in mingled confusion or disorder
papers strewn pell-mell on the desk
2
: in confused haste
ran pell-mell for the door
pell-mell adjective or noun

Did you know?

The word pell-mell was probably formed through a process called reduplication. This process—which involves the repetition of a word or part of a word, with often a slight change in its form—also generated the terms flip-flop, chitchat, and shilly-shally, the last of which comes from a single-word compression of the question “Shall I?” For pell-mell, the process is believed to have occurred long ago: our word traces to a Middle French word of the same meaning, pelemele, which comes from the Old French word pesle mesle, likely a product of reduplication from the Old French word mesle, a form of mesler, meaning “to mix” or “to mingle.”

Examples of pell-mell in a Sentence

tossed stuff pell-mell into the dorm room ran pell-mell down the road to get help
Recent Examples on the Web
These examples are automatically compiled from online sources to illustrate current usage. Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Abe and Mary are part Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, part George and Martha, part the old vaudevillians George Burns and Gracie Allen, all running together pell-mell toward the Copacabana. Chris Jones, New York Daily News, 12 July 2024 Its unreformed economy is in secular decline, while its pell-mell effort to modernize its armed forces and take strategic initiative has revived NATO, terrified Russia’s formerly pro-Russian neighbors, and put off much of the world. Alexander J. Motyl, Foreign Affairs, 25 Sep. 2016 Administration officials don’t see this situation as similar to October 2022, when the intelligence community saw a significant possibility Putin might use tactical nuclear weapons to avert a collapse of Russia’s front lines in Ukraine and prevent a pell-mell retreat. David Ignatius, Washington Post, 21 June 2024 Ultimately, the more naturalistic second half — which has a realistic set with chairs and tables, delivered in a clunky black-out transition by intrusive stagehands — gets as sharp and loud as the pell-mell sounds-and-lights first half. Christopher Arnott, Hartford Courant, 12 Apr. 2024 Only a few of them stopped with remainder racing pell-mell through the intersection as approaching cars on Charles braked abruptly. Reader Commentary, Baltimore Sun, 25 Apr. 2024 Ministry is not nearly as proficient as Chad Stahelski’s John Wick 4 or Matthias Schweighöfer’s Army of Thieves, but the pell-mell combat scenes are consistently cartoonish. Armond White, National Review, 19 Apr. 2024 America saw a pell-mell downsizing of gas-guzzling vehicles and a simultaneous ramping up of imports of fuel-efficient Japanese cars. Jim Krane, Fortune, 12 Oct. 2023 The brokers surged out of the exchange, stumbling pell-mell over each other in the general confusion, and reached their respective offices in racehorse time. Mickey Butts, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Sep. 2023

Word History

Etymology

Middle French pelemele

First Known Use

1590, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of pell-mell was in 1590

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Dictionary Entries Near pell-mell

Cite this Entry

“Pell-mell.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pell-mell. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.

Kids Definition

pell-mell

adverb
ˈpel-ˈmel
1
: in confusion or disorder
2
: in great haste
pell-mell adjective

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