welter

A general confusion or muddle, especially of a large number of items.

He would, except for his guests, have fled outdoors and walked off the intoxication of food, but in the haze which filled the room they sat forever, talking, talking, while he agonized, “Darn fool to be eating all this—not ’nother mouthful,” and discovered that he was again tasting the sickly welter of melted ice cream on his plate.

And in truth, his mind was such a welter of opposites—of the night and the blazing candles, of the shabby poet and the great Queen, of silent fields and the clatter of serving men—that he could see nothing; or only a hand.

A tossing or rolling about.

To roll around; to wallow.

[…] were it not for shame, Shame and dishonour to a soldier’s name, Upon my weapon’s point here shouldst thou fall, And welter in thy gore.

I had no horse, and the deep and wheeling stream of the river, rendered turbid by the late tumult of which its channel had been the scene, and seeming yet more so under the doubtful influence of an imperfect moonlight, had no inviting influence for a pedestrian by no means accustomed to wade rivers, and who had lately seen horsemen weltering, in this dangerous passage, up to the very saddle laps.

To revel, luxuriate.

1537, Hugh Latimer, Sermon III, Preached to the Convocation of the Clergy, in The Sermons of Hugh Latimer, London: J. Scott, 1783, Volume I, p. 38, When we welter in pleasures and idleness, then we eat and drink with drunkards.

These wisards weltre in welths waues, pampred in pleasures deepe, They han fatte kernes, and leany knaues,

To rise and fall, to tumble over, to roll.

Such Musick (as ’tis said) Before was never made, But when of old the sons of morning sung, While the Creator Great His constellations set, And the well-ballanc’t world on hinges hung, And cast the dark foundations deep, And bid the weltring waves their oozy channel keep.

There, waves that, hardly weltering, die away, Tip their smooth ridges with a softer ray;

Heavyweight. (of horsemen)

a welter race