Hurly-Burly, subs. (old: now colloquial).—A commotion; a bustle; an uproar.
c. 1509–1547. Lusty Juventus (Dodsley), [Old Plays, 4th ed., 1874, ii., 85]. What a hurly-burly is here! Smick smack, and all this gear!
1539. Tavernier, Garden of Wysdom, E. ii. verso. Thys kynge [Gelo] on a tyme exacted money of hys comons, whome when he perceuyed in a hurly burly for the same, and ready to make an insurrection, he thus sodaynly appeased.
1542. Udall, Apophthegms of Erasmus [1877], p. 115. the meaning of the Philosophier was, that princes for the ambition of honour, rule and dominion, being in continuall strife, and hurlee burlee, are in very deede persons full of miserie and wo.
1551. More, Utopia, (Pitt Press ed., 1884, i., 52, 5). Whereby so many nations for his sake should be broughte into a troublesome hurlei-burley.
1567. Fenton, Tragical Dicsourses, f. 104. They heard a great noyse and hurleyburley in the street of the Guard and chief officers of the Watch.
1592. Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (Grosart, Works, ii., 53). Not trouble our peaceable Paradise with their private hurlie-burlies about strumpets.
1599. Nashe, Lenten Stuffe (Grosart, Works, v., 293). Put them in feare where no feare is, and make a hurlie-burlie in the realm.
1606. Shakspeare, Macbeth, i., 1. When the hurley-burley’s done, When the battle’s lost and won.
1619. T. North’s Diall of Princes (1557), corrected, p. 703, c. 1. Two or three dayes before you shall see such resort of persons, such hurly burly, such flying this way, such sending that way, some occupyed in telling the cookes how many sorts of meates they will have.…