crazy quilt
1
6.0
- noun
- /ˈkreɪzi kwɪlt/
:
colcha loca
- The landscape was a crazy quilt of fields and forests, each section varying drastically in color and texture.
- crazy quilt pattern
Examples
-
The artist created a crazy quilt using scraps of fabric from all her previous projects.
-
"I think it's a crazy quilt."
Fiction book (2000) -
I once amazed Carl and his wife, Norma, by making a dress out of a crazy quilt we found in an antique shop years ago.
Fiction book (1998) -
(d) The crazy quilt.
Academic text (1992) -
One consequence of this crazy quilt of energy options is that if something disrupted access to any one source of energy, the rest of the household chugged on unaffected.
Blog text (23) -
Her dress was a crazy quilt of colors and patterns, each square telling a different story.
Synonyms
140
1.2
A warm blanket of two layers of fabric stitched together with soft filling
9
3.5
A quilt made by sewing together different pieces of cloth
2
3.3
A bed cover made by sewing different pieces of cloth together
How Varied
1
6.0
2
3.3
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun is compositionally built from 'crazy' (unusual, mismatched) + 'quilt' (a sewn blanket), so a learner who knows both words can infer an unusually made or patchwork blanket. The extended metaphorical use for a heterogeneous or mismatched collection follows directly from that image and is therefore predictable to learners.
Etymology
One popular story says the noun crazy quilt comes from old sewing where people stitched together 'scraps' of cloth in odd shapes and bright colors instead of regular pieces. The word crazy here meant 'wild' or 'mixed', and quilt is a stitched blanket, so the phrase now also describes things 'made of many different or mismatched parts'.