Green’s Dictionary of Slang

catawampusly adv.

(US) fiercely.

1830		N.-Y. Eve. Post 18 May 2/2: The Augusta Courier contains a specimen of a ‘Cracker Dictionary,’ which makes us acquainted with some very curious terms in use among the Southern Cockneys. At the head of the list we find the following words: — Bodaciously, Catawampously, Contraption, &c.
1838		‘Paul Pry’ Oddities of London Life II 249: [T]he complainant began to fear that some fine morning herself and husband would be ‘catawompously chaw’d up’ by the defendants.
1840		Spirit of the Times (N.Y.) 25 Jan. 561/2: Him is done up – used up catawampous – kicked up into eberlasting hoki!
1846		N.Y. Herald 17 June n.p.: There he’s slain two thousand men, All chaw’d up catawampously [DA].
1850		W.K. Northall Life and Recollections of Yankee Hill 103: Citizens and fellers; on the bloody ground on which our fathers catawampously poured out their claret free as ile, to enrich the soil over which we now honor and watch with hyena eyes, let the catamount of the inner varmint loose.
1851		M. Reid Scalp-Hunters I 279: Whether we fired symultainyously, or extraneously, or cattawampously ain’t the flappin o’ a beaver’s tail to me.
1855		Coventry Herald 14 Aug. 2/1: Open your mouth and down it goes, gulp by gulp [...] As you catawampou—ishly chaw it up.
1861		Examiner (London) 10 Aug. 5/1: I’ll take the parchment crittur again [...] and whop it catawompously when we gits among the houses.
1867		M.E. Braddon ‘The Giant’s Sword’ in Belgravia III 37: The meaning of the term, when clearly stated, / Is ‘catawampusly absquotulated’.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 590: Hence, no doubt, the further development of the word. ‘He was catawamptiously chawed up,’ was said of a political character, who had been fiercely attacked by a host of adversaries in the Legislature of Missouri; and even orators of greater pretension, addressing a body of national representatives, have not disdained to use the phrase.
1878		C. Tuttle Border Tales 99: We may be catawampously chawed up, as they say in Arkansaw, by some of these wild varmints.
1902		Ade Forty Modern Fables 235: [He] held out his Flipper and said he’d be catawampously Jiggered if he wasn’t all-fired Proud to meet him.