Willy-nilly (idiom)
English slang for unplanned or haphazard / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Willy-nilly is an English-language idiom and a slang which describes an activity, an action or event that is done in a disorganized, unplanned, or vacillating manner.[1][2][3] The term is derived from Shakespearian expression "will ye, nill ye", which is a contraction that means “whether one wants to or not.”[4] It has a very similar meaning to other reduplicates, that also pertain to 'disorderly' and 'disorganized', such as pell-mell,[5] helter-skelter,[6] hurry-scurry[7] and higgledy-piggledy,[8][lower-alpha 1] all originating in the post-medieval period.[lower-alpha 2] Moreover, the idiomatic phrase to-and-fro (and its gerund toing-and-froing), which originate in the 1820s, also have a similar sense of repetitive movement, instability and vacillation.[9][10]