Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Something made or put together using whatever materials happen to be available: "Even the decor is a bricolage, a mix of this and that” ( Los Angeles Times).
Wiktionary
- n. uncountable Construction using whatever was available at the time.
- n. countable Something constructed using whatever was available at the time.
Etymologies
- Borrowing from French (Wiktionary)
- French, from bricole, trifle, from Old French, catapult, from Old Italian briccola, of Germanic origin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I was using the term bricolage really with a view to things working within a particular environment, and not necessarily being used in the same way they were intended to be used.”
“One of the ways of understanding the word bricolage, historically, is to 'putter about.”
“Before she went over to gigantism, Frey worked at a scale that allowed her to channel this fascination into what she called her bricolage sculptures.”
“I learned that Claude Levi-Strauss, the French anthropologist, coined a term bricolage to describe the thought patterns and learning processes of "primitive" societies.”
“He discussed an interesting concept: bricolage, which is basically a convoluted term for the English's "do it yourself," or DIY attitude.”
The Huffington Post: Shaun Johnson: How Can Punk Rock Enlighten the Education Reform Debate?
“Steven Johnson's great book Where Good Ideas Come From uses the term "bricolage" to describe the random and often undervalued raw material from which innovations are crafted.”
The Huffington Post: Michael J. Critelli: Playing With What You've Got
“So, rather than indicating purely a failure in theorisation — a kind of bricolage of remnants”
“The "epistemological pluralism" (EP)paper downplays the importance of abstraction in the name of opening up things for different learning styles ("bricolage").”
“It's a kind of bricolage aspiring to be collage, a mini-Frankenstein monster of interstitiality, the science of plate tectonics applied to the continental drift of genres and imaginations.”
“Mason & Dixon is, in short, a kind of bricolage of eighteenth-century science, religion, philosophy, myth, fable, and superstition, all treated on the same narrative plane, as equally true and equally fantastic.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bricolage’.
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art & art historical
chiaroscuro, architrave, column, capital, corinthian, dorice, entablature, frieze, ionic, sketch, abecedarian, abstraction and 124 more...
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The -ages of Man(-age)
Trivet also has this list, which you should go see. And then I found this list, and this list...
manage, salvage, selvadge, savage, voyage, umbrage, entourage, homage, carriage, marriage, language, potage and 123 more...
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Wicked Cool Words
These words have been posted on my vocabulary tumblr, wickedcoolwords.tumblr.com!
miasma, libation, laconic, denigrating, deontic, accinge, liquescent, quagmire, exiguous, dirigible, lambasted, lambaste and 89 more...
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MiaLuthien's list ♥
gambit, prehensile, coquetry, impunity, genuflect, ensconce, clavicle, delude, beget, castigate, life caching, convoluted and 478 more...
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Vega's Logophile Dictionary
Words I've heard/read in use, words being learnt, words that I want to eventually use in everyday language, words that are high-brow and elitist and scholarly and obscure, words that display the wo...
parsimonious, torpor, recalcitrant, plebeian, vitriol, gumption, augur, aestival, celerity, diaphanous, farrago, nonpareil and 287 more...
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Verba Dilecta
delectable, notate, pauciloquy, paucity, pauciloquent, paucify, interscapilium, uropygium, inferna, nota, equipollent, prepollent and 677 more...
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thekatespanos's list
pomposity, gaggle, scintilla, lemming, bilk, vanquish, conflate, plenary, verisimilitude, perspicacious, rattletrap, obdurate and 325 more...
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There's a word for that?
temerity, tacit, froward, faineant, caterwaul, menagerie, ennui, sine qua non, lissom, multifarious, laconic, katzenjammer and 240 more...
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List Erine
cool mint antiseptic
shalom, cattywampus, bourgeoisie, aerophile, traverse, grotto, epicurean, ex cathedra, nautilus, epitaph, lathe, continuum and 753 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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Learned (or Encountered) in Reading
I have a list for words learned from Newsweek; here's where I keep all the stuff from other shit I read.
Except when I'm looking stuff up and find new words that way. Those go on their...cellie, laminectomy, mridangam, terroir, hypospadias, crus, corpora cavernosa, crura, uretheral meatus, bartholin's gland, coloquintida, colopexy and 921 more...
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wordhoard
dilatory, ataraxia, hermit, cabana, hut, dome, vestigial, porcine, crapulous, usufruct, curmudgeon, bombastic and 229 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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my words
interminable, effete, convocation, philistines, malaise, foibles, deputation, anathematized, morass, stalwart, proselytize, abet and 405 more...
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Words of Whimsy & Grace
abecedary, addendum, ampersand, anachronism, avuncular, balderdash, barnacle, befuddle, behemoth, bejeebers, blabbermouth, blatherskite and 465 more...
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Wordie/Wordnik Curio Cabinet
Oddments culled from my "main" lists that belong in a display cabinet of their own, plus sundry other curiosities. :-)
zeugma, ziggurat, xiphoid, xeric, whizgigging, whangdoodle, viviparous, vivific, vinolent, verjuice, vellicate, velleity and 1193 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for bricolage.
chained_bear "But Dionysiac themes were ever present in the pagen/Jewish culture in which Jesus' followers sought to interpret their leader's brief life and tortured death. There were forty years between Jesus' death and the first written account of his life—time enough for his followers to assemble a myth of his divine lineage and mission out of the cultural bricolage available to them, which already included the notion of a wine-bringing, life-giving, populist, victim god."
—Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 64 Mar 12, 2009
kalidas definition: construction (as of a sculpture or a structure of ideas) achieved by using whatever comes to hand; something constructed this way.
see collage Jan 2, 2007
ecrivaine33 The Internet is a global bricolage, lashing together unthinkable complexities of miscellaneous computers with temporary lengths of phone line and fiber optic, bits of Ethernet cable and strings of code.
-- Bernard Sharratt, "Only Connected", New York Times, December 17, 1995 Jan 2, 2007