hurly-burly

hurly-burly

A wild and chaotic situation. Boy, it was a real hurly burly in there once the kids started tearing into their Christmas presents.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

hurly burly

A noisy confusion. To hurl is to throw, and “hurly burly” is based on the image of a mob throwing things around chaotically. The phrase appears in the opening scene of Shakespeare's Macbeth when the witches chant, “When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning, or in rain? / When the hurlyburly's done, / When the battle's lost and won.”
See also: burly, hurly
Endangered Phrases by Steven D. Price
See also:
  • hurly
  • hurly burly
  • tearing
  • ain’t 1
  • hurry
  • a wild card word for words beginning with
  • gentle giant
  • be on the side of the angels
  • on the side of the angels, to be
  • burst through (something)
References in periodicals archive
Kuwait, April 22 (BNA) Causes of the political hurly-burly witnessed by Iran recently in connection with the resignation of its Intelligence Minister Haidar Moslehi have been revealed by high profile GCC sources to Kuwaiti Al Qabas newspaper.
And he's hung up his penchant for the hurly-burly of the chaise longue in favour of the deep peace of a marriage bed containing the lovely Katy, a formerly God-fearing lass from the US bible belt.
But, since the TSE switched to electronic trading about a decade ago, many traders say they no longer need lunch breaks to rest from the hurly-burly of trading.
AS HE approaches the end of his years in office - he will celebrate his ninth anniversary as First Minister in February - Rhodri Morgan seems increasingly withdrawn from the hurly-burly of political controversy.
Then at 14 I was whisked off into the hurly-burly of work and had a lot more to think about.
Foucault's revolt against the "order of things" and his scholarly panegyrics against Enlightenment discipline seemed so uplifting at the tail end of the '70s, amid the hurly-burly of filthy city dreams.
He also set himself up to become somebody who could follow in Edison's shoes as an entrepreneur-cum-researcher by throwing himself into the hurly-burly of Silicon Valley.
It is hoped that these articles will spark a continued interest in research in this important field and highlight the efforts of researchers who are engaged in important endeavors that may otherwise go unnoticed in the hurly-burly of educational politics.
If they resided in dorms when they were in college, they may have memories of a refuge; a place removed from the hurly-burly of commercial life.
He lost his virginity at 24 - Shirley sampled his curly-wurly in a bed-sit hurly-burly, although I always thought Shirley would have gone for someone more burly...
"You're removed from the hurly-burly, and it gives people in the Midwest access to a great variety of recreational amenities," says Kohler.
The echoes of the past combined with the hurly-burly of today reverberate in 3,000-year-old Jerusalem, capital of Israel.
These are books in which the presence or possibility of death becomes the occasion for looking past the hurly-burly of daily ambition to lasting questions of family, generosity, courage, love, and purpose in life.
It's as if he merely tagged along on their trippy, aimless adventures, coaxing admirable vignettes from the shapeless hurly-burly of their lives.
It may not be fashionable in the hurly-burly of the modern world to acknowledge a debt to our fellow citizens, to recognise that we all have to give something back to the community that nurtures us.