Definition of "crazy quilt" [crazy quilt]

• A patchwork quilt of pieces of cloth of various shapes, colors, and sizes, sewn together in an irregular pattern. (noun)
• A disorderly mixture; a hodgepodge: The map was a crazy quilt of districts and precincts. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It took me a long minute of searching just to find a door in that crazy quilt of corners, flying buttresses, and leering gargoyles."
• "The streets of the Haight were a crazy quilt of social outcasts living on the edge: baby-faced bikers, whores, pimps, and other assorted jackals."