Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An assortment or a medley; a conglomeration: "their special farrago of resentments” ( William Safire).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A mass composed of various materials confusedly mixed; a medley; a hodgepodge.
- n. Synonyms See mixture.
Wiktionary
- n. A collection containing a confused variety of miscellaneous things
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A mass composed of various materials confusedly mixed; a medley; a mixture.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a motley assortment of things
Etymologies
- Latin farrāgō, mixed fodder, hodgepodge, from far, farr-, a kind of grain; see bhares- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“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
“Not a word of all this, which common minds called farrago, but which had its truth to me, did I utter to Laura.”
“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.”
“Beverly Darmour, Diane Skinner introduced the word "farrago," meaning mixture or medley.”
“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.”
“Possibly the best word for it, and it's meant approvingly, is 'farrago.”
The Huffington Post: David Tereshchuk: Mixed-Media Extravaganza -- and a Global Message
“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.”
The Guardian: Helium-sniffing Simeon Troll goes for broke in the mad world of Potya
“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.”
The Guardian: Andy Gray and Richard Keys convicted on sound evidence | Barney Ronay
“• "I could not believe the way they treated me," said former assistant commissioner Andy Hayman yesterday, 24 hours after his variety show performance in front of the home affairs select committee as it considered the hacking farrago.”
“• A light-hearted column If Murdoch had paid attention to the works of Shakespeare, he would have seen that this hacking farrago would end badly, 13 July, page 5, G2 attributed two quotations on ambition to Macbeth.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘farrago’.
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Topical
The buzzwords of our time
actionable, administrivia, advermation, agreeance, backbone provider, back-sourcing, baked in, bandwidth, barn raising, Barneyware, belly-buttons, Below Zeros and 734 more...
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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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Mobying Along
looks like there's not an open Moby Dick list. So now there is.
hypos, Manhattoes, circumambulate, mole, grapnels, bowsprit, asphaltic, mazy, tranced, cataract, ungraspable, judgmatically and 227 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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To Define Collections
pasticcio, olio, compendium, assemblage, menagerie, miscellanea, farrago, hotchpot, omnium-gatherum, cento, gallimaufry, anthology and 2 more...
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Trash Talk
Words that indicate meaningless, confusing or deceptive talk.
white noise, blarney, pidgin, jabber, bullshit, yadda yadda yadda, mishmash, farrago, gobbledygook, yammer, drivel, jargon and 18 more...
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Moby Dick
Words of interest from the book Moby Dick.
arrant, obstreperously, coffer-dam, farrago, rejoinder, counterpane, hamper, commend, grego, dreadnought, psalmody, expostulation and 85 more...
sionnach 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. Dec 4, 2008
smeggo Wordie.org is a farrago of logophiles' farragoes. Oct 10, 2008