Definition of "higgledy"

The ride was an overdose of gaudy, hurdy-gurdy, sugary surrealism, as cartoon cacao beans cavorted in a myriad poses, among higgledy houses, in forest glades and up snowy mountains, my purple buggy trundling with agonising slowness through a hallucinatory vision of marketing hell.

2003, Paul Richardson, Indulgence: Around the World in Search of Chocolate, Little, Brown, page 179

Small in scale, the town still reminded him of the ugly underside of cities he had seen from trains, of rubbish tumbling over rubbish along the embankments, higgledy houses, beaten streets.

2007, Carol Lefevre, Nights in the Asylum, Picador, page 134

Your view towards the Old Town is, for me, the most wonderful cityscape in the world — a pulsing crowd of higgledy houses, stacked, ready to topple, like spectators craning their necks to see into the New Town.

2007, “The New Town”, in Lindsey Fraser, Kathryn Ross, editors, Reading Round Edinburgh: A Guide to Children’s Books of the City, Floris Books, page 51, column 2

The acres of parkland and the huge volcano thing (it is dormant, isn’t it?) allow for plenty of outdoor romping when the weather holds. And when it doesn't, higgledy old houses and some Harry Potteresque buildings have their attractions, while the city’s gloriously gory history should keep even the most jaded of teenagers switched on to the capital and its delights.

2015, Edinburgh, Time Out Digital Ltd, page 168

She thought about Montenello with its steep streets and higgledy houses, of summer sunshine, big bowls of pasta and glasses of flinty red wine.

2019, Nicky Pellegrino, A Dream of Italy, Orion Books

This is not a yard but a row of higgledy houses with barefoot children on every doorstep, and the roofs patched and falling in, and the walls streaked with damp, and the ground a quagmire.

2019, Kat Armstrong, A Pair of Sharp Eyes, Hookline Books