☼ Concept Map

''pell-mell'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

''pell-mell'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260313192153-00-⌔

pell-mell - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

pell-mell (comparative more pell-mell, superlative most pell-mell)

  • Hasty and uncontrolled.
    • ✤ Nor moody Beggars, ſtaruing for a time/Of pell-mell hauocke, and confusion.1
    • ✤ These present the appearance of masses of water-worn gravel, mixed in the most pell mell confusion, the boulders being often of very large size; but I observed no striae, nor any of the blue tenacious clay of the Till, which it so much resembled.2
    • ✤ The whole district presents the most pell-mell throwing together imaginable.3
    • ✤ The pell mell, hell for leather traffic of Lagos was more pell mell, hell for leather than ever.4
    • ✤ The cattle are less disciplined, more pell-mell, heavy-footed, their hooves stamping the ground to mud in several places.5
    • ✤ China’s pell-mell, brisk urbanization has in some ways made the challenge harder to face.6

Adverb

pell-mell (not comparable)

  • In haste and chaos; uncontrolledly, confusedly.
    • ✤ But ſeeing that there the murdring Enemie,/Peſle-meſle, purſued them like a ſtorme of hayle,/They gan retyre vvhere Iuba vvas encampt; […]]7
    • ✤ Never was there a great battle fought more pell-mell, since war began; never was valor so completely thrown away.8
    • ✤ The table was covered with a confusion of papers, books, pamphlets, all heaped upon one another pell-mell; […]9
    • ✤ * Pell-mell they rushed for Inverness and safety, leaving the strange battlefield to the stalwart five.*10
    • ✤ A group of the reapers whom we had seen running from the fields were lying all pell-mell, their bodies crossing each other, at the bottom of it.11
    • ✤ And the prompter our payments the more pell-mell the news came in and the more obligingly gruesome its detail.12
    • ✤ Some are already packed up well;/Others are at it, most pell mell.13

Noun

pell-mell (uncountable)

  • Alternative form of pall mall (“ball game”).

Etymology

From French pêle-mêle, from Old French pesle-mesle, apparently a rhyme based on the stem of mesler (“to mix, meddle”). Compare meddle, melee.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈpɛlˈmɛl/
  • Homophone: pall mall (US)
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 69, column 2: ↩

  2. 1883, Transactions of the Edinburgh Geological Society, volume 4, page 204: ↩

  3. 1924, Konrad Bercovici, Around the World in New York, page 134: ↩

  4. 1961, Charles J. Patterson, Letters relating to Africa south of the Sahara, especially to Nigeria, page 18: ↩

  5. 2003, Audrey Joan Whitson, Teaching Places, page 50: ↩

  6. 2021 July 26, Steven Lee Myers, Keith Bradsher, Chris Buckley, “As China Boomed, It Didn’t Take Climate Change Into Account. Now It Must.”, in The New York Times ‎, →ISSN: ↩

  7. [1594, Robert Garnier, translated by Thomas Kid [i.e., Thomas Kyd], Pompey the Great, His Faire Corneliaes Tragedie: […], London: […] [James Roberts] for Nicholas Ling, published 1595, →OCLC, act V: ↩

  8. 1861, George Wilkes, The Great Battle, page 27: ↩

  9. [1884], [Mary Elizabeth Braddon], “‘The Breaker has come up before Them’”, in Ishmael: […], volume I, London: John and Robert Maxwell, […], →OCLC, page 289: ↩

  10. 1905, Charles Sanford Terry, The Young Pretender, page 81: ↩

  11. 1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC: ↩

  12. 1996, Rodney Hall, The Island in the Mind, page 400: ↩

  13. 2006, Marion Woods, “Getting Ready”, in A Spiritual Journey Through Poetry with Marion Woods, published 2009, page 48: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •