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The Learning Kingdom's Cool Word of the Day for May 26, 1999
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farrago [n. fuh-RAY-go, fuh-RAH-go]
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A farrago is a mixed medley, a varied assortment. It's a slightly
disparaging word that implies a haphazard, disorganized collection.
Example: "Edwin's thesis was little more than a random farrago of
hastily collected themes."
Our modern word is a direct descendent of the Latin farrago, which was
a kind of mixed cattle feed, or more generally, any kind of mixture.
The root was Latin far (spelt, a kind of hardy wheat), which also gave
us farina (a mealy sort of breakfast cereal) and farinaceous (starchy,
mealy, powdery).
When English adopted farrago the meaning broadened from a mixture of
fodder to include any kind of mixture, even a mixture of ideas, as in
"a farrago of nonsense," one of the most popular modern uses of the
word.
More distant relatives from the same root include the grain called
barley, and the place where it is stored, which is called the barn.
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