Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An assortment or a medley; a conglomeration.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A mass composed of various materials confusedly mixed; a medley; a hodgepodge.
- noun Synonyms See
mixture .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A mass composed of various materials confusedly mixed; a medley; a mixture.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A collection containing a confused variety of
miscellaneous things.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a motley assortment of things
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Why the UN acquiesces in this obscene farrago is an exercise best left to the student.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Genetic Evidence Shows Common Origins of Jews 2010
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Not a word of all this, which common minds called farrago, but which had its truth to me, did I utter to Laura.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 41, March, 1861 Various
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The play has been described as a farrago of undercooked ideas and clashing styles by some critics, lauded as a brilliantly unorthodox play of daring imaginative scope by others.
NYT > Home Page By CHARLES ISHERWOOD 2010
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Beverly Darmour, Diane Skinner introduced the word "farrago," meaning mixture or medley.
Durangoherald.com 2009
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Posner reviews them all in turn, in a hectic flurry of piled-up fact-bites, speculative calcula-tions, passing quarrels, and offhand policy dicta ” an orderless mixture of assertion, guess, remark, and opinion for which the term "farrago" would seem to have been invented.
Very Bad News Geertz, Clifford 2005
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Possibly the best word for it, and it's meant approvingly, is 'farrago.'
David Tereshchuk: Mixed-Media Extravaganza -- and a Global Message David Tereshchuk 2012
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As hardly needs repeating here, Mint's part in the corruption farrago rested entirely on a homonym-inspired error that led him to offer the German FA a side of pork and two kilograms of liver sausage for Berti Vogts.
Helium-sniffing Simeon Troll goes for broke in the mad world of Potya Harry Pearson 2010
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At the end of a long week of sexism and counter-sexism, the white heat of the Richard Keys and Andy Gray farrago seemed to fade as quickly as it blew up.
Andy Gray and Richard Keys convicted on sound evidence | Barney Ronay 2011
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Possibly the best word for it, and it's meant approvingly, is 'farrago.'
David Tereshchuk: Mixed-Media Extravaganza -- and a Global Message David Tereshchuk 2012
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Possibly the best word for it, and it's meant approvingly, is 'farrago.'
David Tereshchuk: Mixed-Media Extravaganza -- and a Global Message David Tereshchuk 2012
smeggo commented on the word farrago
Wordie.org is a farrago of logophiles' farragoes.
October 10, 2008
sionnach commented on the word farrago
Foote's farrago was composed by Samuel Foote in 1755 to test the memory of the actor Charles Macklin, who had claimed he could read any paragraph once through and then recite it verbatim. What Foote demonstrated was the way in which we expect language to make sense and to be coherent. When our expectations are confounded as much as they are here, the text becomes impossible to memorise.
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. "What! No soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyalies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.
December 5, 2008
MaryW commented on the word farrago
Oliver Sacks, On the Move (New York: Knopf, 2015)
December 26, 2015