A complete tangle.
1829. A queer-looking Dutchman, with the head like a “hurra’s nest” and a great wooden pipe, kept the room in a roar with his drollery.—Longfellow, ‘Life’ (1891), i. 164. (N.E.D.)
1840. The sea, too, had risen, the vessel was rolling heavily, and everything was pitched about in grand confusion. There was a complete “hurrah’s nest,” as the sailors say, “everything on top and nothing at hand.”—R. H. Dana, Jr., ‘Two Years before the Mast,’ chap. ii., p. 10. (N.E.D.)
1848. Sich another hurra’s nest I never did hear before [as the orchestra at the opera].—W. T. Thompson, ‘Major Jones’s Sketches of Travel,’ p. 98 (Phila.).
1856. The remainder of her person seemed to be a miscellaneous sort of hurrah’s nest, or promiscuous wilderness of all sorts of laces and jewelry, among which about four dozen bracelets shone conspicuously.—Knick. Mag., xlviii. 282–3 (Sept.).
1869. You’ve got our clock all to pieces, and have been keeping up a perfect hurrah’s nest in our kitchen.—Mrs. Stowe, ‘Oldtown Folks,’ chap. iv. (Bartlett).
