Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A buffet meal featuring a varied number of dishes.
- n. A varied collection: "a smorgasbord of fashionable paranormal beliefs” ( Martin Gardner).
Wiktionary
- n. A buffet.
- n. figuratively a collection of various things
WordNet 3.0
- n. a collection containing a variety of sorts of things
- n. an assortment of foods starting with herring or smoked eel or salmon etc with bread and butter; then cheeses and eggs and pickled vegetables and aspics; finally hot foods; served as a buffet meal
Etymologies
- From the Swedish smörgåsbord ("a buffet with many small dishes"), a compound of smörgås ("sandwich") and bord ("table"). (Wiktionary)
- Swedish smörgåsbord : smörgås, bread and butter (smör, butter from Old Norse + Swedish dialectal gås, lump of butter from Old Norse gās, goose; see gosling) + bord, table (from Old Norse bordh). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The word smorgasbord doesn't really do justice to this random assortment.”
“Becca – smorgasbord is a great word and so very apt!”
“What a wonderful smorgasbord (that is a Swedish word).”
“To advertisers, it's a sign that under Hammer's watch, a network once known as a smorgasbord has become focused and confident.”
“Today a smorgasbord is a term that you use for some highway cafeteria that serves you all-you-can-eat for a cheap price.”
“I used to eat at a Scandinavian cafeteria in San Francisco that called itself a "smorgasbord" and advertised its reindeer meatballs over pasta as superior to the Italian meatballs at the U.S. Cafe next door.”
“If the ongoing Toronto International Film Festival is, as its organizers say, a "smorgasbord" overflowing with hundreds of entrees, think of New York's as three dozen plates of food for thought, served up to offset what appears to be a low-calorie fall from Hollywood.”
“You have a kind of smorgasbord, and depending on what time of life you're in, you choose the benefits which fit your lifestyle.”
Women In Engineering: Creating A Professional Workforce For The 21st Century
“Our technical programmes in the schools were virtually eliminated by the new "smorgasbord" approach to education in which every student is able to choose every subject he may possibly want to learn: a little of this, a little of that, but nobody was to be streamed into any kind of technical education.”
“Given the "smorgasbord" style of general education prevalent in the UNC system, this means that they are essentially taking electives for the first two years.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘smorgasbord’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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#faveword
Words chosen as favorites for the Twitter hashtag #faveword.
autumnal, grotto, chiaroscuro, sfumato, homunculus, zing, zest, effervescent, bewitch, avuncular, susurrus, Styrofoam and 205 more...
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Words with two Os in them
theriomorphic, zoo, oberon, pool, tool, fool, cool, school, occlusion, operation, opioid, solenoid and 24 more...
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Herring
herring, pickled herring, red herring, bloater, herring-buss, herring-fishery, herring pond, herring-pond, whitebait, herringbone, herring-bone, buss and 65 more...
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Kalli's Words
redundant, munchkin, escapade, natch, boom, fap, geek, nocturnal, pedantic, tactile, conversant, oxymoron and 188 more...
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food words
weetabix, blancmange, shandy, meringue, allspice, pavlova, quiche, caster sugar, suet, moonshine, turnip, swede and 93 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
thunderfuck, incredible, merp, sara, flopparoo, smother, fugly, buer, plum, canny, nefelibata, cuntbucket and 1972 more... -
generationnext's Words
petulant, vehement, pensive, lascivious, vacillate, histrionic, satiated, svelte, lithe, zeitgeist, viscous, sommelier and 526 more...
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word tank
a couple words
logolepsy, nefarious, quintessential, tintinnabulation, serendipity, rhapsody, palimpsest, panoply, mellifluous, imbue, loquacious, garrulous and 174 more...
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cxfx's list
callipygous, scaphism, ubermorgen, handschuhschneeba..., farctate, autohagiography, autolatry, spindrift, feculent, verisimilitude, brobdingnagian, ineluctable and 205 more...
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rfb's Words
verschlimmbessern, schnabulieren, absahnen, gebauchpinselt, frostbeule, formulediarree, flabbergasted, beeumeln, schmusekater, hausse, dose, knorke and 197 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (S)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
sabian symbols, saffron, sagacious, sage, salamander, sally lunn, salmon, salsify, salt water taffy, samhain, sand dollar, sandalwood and 270 more...
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kimo2000's Words
pakalolo, miliated, voodoo, vindaloo, hacienda, acquiesce, addlepated, olio, akimbo, apropos, oogenesis, arugula and 181 more...
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ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
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vocabulary
verisimilitude, pendulate, moxie, whimper, nary, stevedore, hubris, prodigious, super-injunction, injunction, lashings, fennel and 202 more...
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elvesoncrack's Words
lachrymose, blustering, fjord, chihuahua, chiffon, catalytic, stile, gefilte, prosh, thwart, ralph, ickle and 379 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for smorgasbord.

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