farrago

See also: fárrago

English

WOTD – 6 September 2011

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin farrāgō (“mixed fodder; mixture, hodgepodge”), from far (“emmer (a kind of wheat), coarse meal, grits”). Doublet of farro.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fəˈɹeɪɡoʊ/, /fəˈɹɑːɡoʊ/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

Noun

farrago (plural farragos or farragoes)

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

   Synonyms: hodgepodge, melange, mingle-mangle; see also Thesaurus:hodgepodge

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

     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!

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

     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.

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

     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.

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

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

   • 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:

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

   • 2005 November 7, Toronto Star:

     The original script is a complicated farrago of intertwined greed and lust, with marriages being planned and hearts being broken in order to accumulate fortunes as well as romance.

   • 2007 June 15, Oliver Burkeman, “The rise of the anti-self-help movement”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     It has been pointed out in this space before that a number of the titles you'll find shelved under self-help in your local bookshop are, on closer examination, farragos of wooden-headed tripe, written by mountebanks and halfwits.

   • 2013 May 10, James Ball, “US government attempts to stifle 3D-printer gun designs will ultimately fail”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     And this is where the larger problem lies: when states try to enforce impossible bans, everyone loses. 3D printing farragoes have all the hallmarks of the absolute worst kind of ineffectual ban: one which encourages overly draconian laws that carry huge side effects, and that ultimately to have little to no effect.

   • 2023 December 31, Jasper Jolly, “A Farage farrago, crypto crime and rivers of cash: the 2023 Observer business awards”, in The Guardian‎^[3]:

     The farrago may have deprived Farage of a fancy bank account, but Alison Rose, chief executive of Coutts’ less exclusive owner, NatWest, gave him something much more valuable: the moral high ground.

Derived terms

• farraginous

Related terms

• farro

Translations

confused miscellany

• Armenian: շիլափլավ (hy) (šilapʻlav)
• Bashkir: ваҡ-төйәк (vaq-töyək)
• Bulgarian: смесица (bg) f (smesica), бъркотия (bg) f (bǎrkotija)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 大雜燴 / 大杂烩 (zh) (dàzáhuì)

• Finnish: sekamelska (fi)
• French: mélange (fr) m, méli-mélo (fr) m, fatras (fr) m
• Hebrew: בליל (he) m (b'líl)
• Latin: farrāgō f
• Portuguese: gororoba (pt) f, farragem f
• Russian: вся́кая вся́чина (ru) f (vsjákaja vsjáčina)
• Spanish: fárrago (es) m, farrago m (dated)
• Tibetan: སྙག་གེ་སྙིག་གེ་ཟང་ཟིང (snyag ge snyig ge zang zing), རྙོག་ཟིང (rnyog zing), སྣེ་འདོམས (sne 'doms), སྣེ་འཛོམས (sne 'dzoms)

See also

• bric-a-brac
• eclectic
• grab bag
• heteroclite
• miscellany

Latin

Etymology

far (“emmer”) +‎ -āgō

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [farˈraː.ɡoː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [farˈraː.ɡo]

Noun

farrāgō f (genitive farrāginis); third declension

1. a kind of hash, mixed fodder for animals
2. mixture, hodgepodge

Declension

Third-declension noun.

	singular	plural
nominative	farrāgō	farrāginēs
genitive	farrāginis	farrāginum
dative	farrāginī	farrāginibus
accusative	farrāginem	farrāginēs
ablative	farrāgine	farrāginibus
vocative	farrāgō	farrāginēs

Descendants

• Insular Romance:
  • Sardinian: farràine, farrani, ferràina, forrani
• Italo-Romance:
  • Italian: farraggine, farragine (latinized), ferrana
• Gallo-Italic:
  • Lombard: fraina
    • → Italian: fraina
• Gallo-Romance:
  • Catalan: farratge
  • Old Occitan: farratge, ferrage
    • Occitan: ferratge
• Ibero-Romance:
  • Old Galician-Portuguese: ferrãe
    • Galician: ferraña, ferrán
    • Portuguese: ferrã
  • Old Spanish: ferranne, ferraine, ferrén
    • Spanish: herrén, rain
• Borrowings:
  • → English: farrago, farraginous
  • → Portuguese: farragem (semi-learned)
  • → Spanish: fárrago

References

• “farrago”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “farrago”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "farrago", in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “farrago”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.