by Kevin Burton
You have a drawer like this, admit it.
It’s that drawer where you keep things, small things. They will be useful, you swear, and you don’t dare throw them away. Twist ties, bolts, rubber bands.
That drawer is a physical category for the uncategorizable.
You may even have a whole room like this, at least a closet.
If you’re embarrassed by the pseudo-orderliness of at all, at least after reading this post you will have words to go with that uneasy feeling, courtesy of Merriam-Webster.
Since many of these words have to do with food, I’m reminded of the sandwiches my brother used to make. I think they were inspired by the sandwiches made by Dagwood Bumstead in the Blondie comic strip.
The sandwiches were made with whatever was at hand – some kind of meat, bread, cheese, maybe lettuce or pickle. My brother would call such a creation a “special.”
Today I carry on this culinary tradition, sort of, though not in the form of sandwiches. I often make a “meal” of whatever odds and ends are left over, what’s closest to expiration, what my wife Jeannette probably won’t eat.
Just cleaning out the fridge, grab what’s there, stop when I’m full.
You may think of the dictionary’s list as being words stuffed together in a place just out of sight, or of morsels tossed into an unlikely stew:
1-Hodgepodge
Hodgepodge is an alteration of hotchpotch, which once referred to a thick soup of barley, peas, and other vegetables, and sometimes includes meat. Hotchpotch is itself an alteration of another word, hotchpot, derived from Old French words meaning “to shake” (hochier) and “soup” (potage).
2- Menagerie
In Middle French, ménagerie meant “the management of a household” or farm or “a place where animals are tended.” (The word ménage, related to mansion, referred to a dwelling house.) When English speakers adopted menagerie, they applied it specifically to the places where circuses and other exhibitions kept show animals.
It’s this sense that applies in the title of Tennessee Williams’ 1944 play The Glass Menagerie, which alludes to a collection of glass figurines owned by the character Laura Wingfield.
3-Gallimaufry
Gallimaufry derives from Middle French, where it referred to a stew made from any variety of meat. The name might be partly derived from the verb galer, which meant “to squander in pleasures” or “to have a good time.”
4-Potpourri
A favorite of Jeopardy! fans, potpourri literally means “rotten pot” in French, and in that language referred to stew made of a variety of meats and vegetables cooked together. What made the pot rotten? Possibly the long cooking time that turned the food to mush. The French borrowed the term as a translation of the Spanish olla podrida, which can also refer to both the stew and a heterogenous mixture in English. Now we often think of potpourri in terms of crushed flowers and spices enjoyed for its fragrant qualities.
5-Salmagundi
Salmagundi is also a food, and for once it’s not a stew. It’s a salad plate of chopped meats, anchovies, eggs, and vegetables arranged in rows and often dressed.
Salmagundi was also the title of a 19th-century satirical magazine created by the novelist Washington Irving. With New York as its subject, Salmagundi was credited with attributing the name Gotham to that city.
6-Smorgasbord
A smorgasbord is a buffet-style meal popular in Scandinavian countries. The word derives from Swedish, where smörgås means “open-faced sandwich” or simply “bread and butter” and bord means “table,” that being the one on which the food is served.
7-Omnium-gatherum
If you’re stuffed by now and can’t eat another bite, don’t worry: there are no calories in omnium-gatherum. And while it sounds like Latin, omnium-gatherum does not actually mean anything in that language. Omnium is the genitive plural of omnis, meaning “all,” but gatherum is simply English gather with -um tacked on the end to echo the classical-sounding ending of the first half of the word.
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