crazy quilt
Americannoun
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a patchwork quilt made of irregular patches combined with little or no regard to pattern.
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something that is irregular in pattern or shape, and suggestive of a crazy quilt; patchwork.
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of crazy quilt
An Americanism dating back to 1885–90
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Several of the Founding Fathers—and nearly everyone around them—devoured Laurence Sterne’s crazy quilt of a tale.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 9, 2026
Rounding out this crazy quilt of strained, intersecting story strands and blunt coincidences is a subplot that eventually becomes the main one.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2023
Over many years, as it grew into one of the city’s tent-pole institutions, the museum accreted some two dozen buildings in different historical styles, increasingly pieced together like a crazy quilt.
From New York Times ● Apr. 25, 2023
They discovered a crazy quilt of laws and traditions governing how states collect and count votes.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 3, 2020
Mats cover the cracked concrete floor, making a crazy quilt of colored rattan and woven plastic.
From "Counting by 7s" by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
