English

Noun

farrago ‎(plural farragos or farragoes)

1. A collection containing a confused variety of miscellaneous things.
   • a. 1900, William Barclay Squire, Balfe, Michael William, article 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, article 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, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, Penguin Books, paperback edition, 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.

Synonyms

• (confused miscellany): hodgepodge, hotchpotch, melange, mingle-mangle, mishmash, oddments, odds and ends, omnium-gatherum, ragbag
• See also Wikisaurus:hodgepodge

Derived terms

• farraginous

Translations

See also

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

Latin

Etymology

From far.

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /farˈraː.ɡoː/

Noun

farrāgō f ‎(genitive farrāginis); third declension

1. A kind of hash
2. Mixture, hodgepodge

Inflection

Third declension.

Descendants

• English: farrago, farraginous
• Italian: farragine, fraina
• Portuguese: farragem
• Sardinian: farràine, farrani, forrani
• Spanish: herrén, fárrago, rain

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, 1883–1887)
• Félix Gaffiot (1934), “farrago”, in Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Paris: Hachette.