English

Adjective

miscellanist ‎(not comparable)

1. Having the characteristics of a miscellany.
   • 2002, Sadhana Naithani, "To Tell a Tale Untold: Two Folklorists in Colonial India," Journal of Folklore Research, vol. 39, no. 2/3, p. 205:

     Punjab Notes and Queries . . . was ethnographic and miscellanist in nature, but its organization was confused.

Noun

miscellanist ‎(plural miscellanists)

1. An author or editor of one or more miscellanies; one who produces written works having a wide range of forms or kinds of content.
   • 1889, Eliakim Littell , Robert S. Littell, Littell's Living Age, 5th series, vol. 66, p. 492:

     Leigh Hunt tried almost every conceivable kind of literature, including a historical novel. . . . All this we may not unkindly brush away, and consider him first as a poet, secondly as a critic, and thirdly as what can be best, though rather unphilosophically, called a miscellanist.

   • 1942, Yamato Ichihashi, "The Maker of Modern Japan by A. L. Sadler" (book review), Pacific Historical Review, vol. 11, no. 1, p. 89:

     Professor Sadler relied heavily on a voluminous work (still unfinished, although some 60 volumes have already been published) by Tokutomi Iichiro, History of the Japanese People in Modern Times. Unfortunately, this Japanese journalist, a prolific writer and a miscellanist, is not accepted as a historian among scholars.

   • 1993, Richard B. Wolf, "Shaftesbury's Just Measure of Irony," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 33, no. 2, p. 582:

     In Miscellaneous Reflections, however, Shaftesbury's approach underwent a significant change. Although the miscellanist persona's presence there is felt in a relatively small part of the work, his ironic celebration of the modern art of patchwork wit and his other manufactured ironies recall Swift's satiric ploys in A Tale of a Tub.

Synonyms

• miscellanarian

See also

• anthologist
• dilettante
• jack of all trades

References

• miscellanist at OneLook Dictionary Search