farrago

plural farragos · plural farragoes

1. A collection containing a confused variety of miscellaneous things.

   Or, This is a farrago of absurdity, I could never feel anything of the sort myself.

   1929 September, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, uniform edition, London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, […], published 1931 (April 1935 printing), →OCLC, page 72

   5 more examples

   Yet do I carry every vvhere vvith me ſuch a confounded farago of doubts, fears, hopes, vviſhes, and all the flimſy furniture of a country Miſs's brain!

   1775 January 17 (first performance), [Richard Brinsley Sheridan], The Rivals, a Comedy. […], London: […] John Wilkie, […], published 1775, →OCLC, Act II, scene i, page 20

   “I’ll break it for him,” said I, now flying into a passion again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlord’s. “It’s broke a’ready,” said he. “Broke,” said I—“broke, do you mean?” “Sartain, and that’s the very reason he can’t sell it, I guess.”

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 3”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

   Back in Paris, where all men adrift naturally float, he succeeded in publishing a fantastic novel, “Sortie d’un Rêve,” a farrago of all that is most foolish in the earlier romantic authors, with here and there a racy turn—“a personal note,” M. Zola would say.

   1885 July, “A Forgotten Pamphleteer”, in Tinsleys’ Magazine, volume 37, London: Tinsley Brothers, page 84

   Balfe's next work, 'The Maid of Artois,' was written to a libretto furnished by Bunn, the first of those astonishing farragoes of balderdash which raised the Drury Lane manager to the first rank amongst poetasters.

   a. 1900, William Barclay Squire, “Balfe, Michael William”, in Dictionary of National Biography, volume 3

   Hastily adapted by slovenly hacks, their librettos (often witty in the original) became incredible farragos of metreless doggrel and punning ineptitude.

   1911, “Drama, 11f: Modern English Drama”, in Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition

   Synonyms: hodgepodge, melange, mingle-mangle, bouillabaisse, bric-a-brac, catch-all, clamjamfrey, cocktail