The word gallimaufry has been around since the sixteenth century, is still in use, but isn’t particularly common today. It’s one of those terms sometimes trotted out to give a literary feel to one’s writing, or spoken in a facetious tone for a quick laugh. The origin of the word is uncertain, though it could have come from the French galimafree, which might have referred to a kind of sauce or stew. Support for this comes from its earliest sense in English of a ragout or hash, to which the current meaning is obviously a figurative reference. “So now,” a writer lamented in 1579, “they have made our English tongue a gallimaufry, or hodgepodge of all other speeches”.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a gallimaufry as ‘a heterogeneous mixture; a jumble or medley’. So in a nutshell, a gallimaufry is a rag-bag of things or a mish-mash!
I wonder if corned-beef hash can be classed as a gallimaufry?
A a matter of interest, when I was Googling the word, I found a book called Gallimaufry by Michael Quinion. The book is a hodgepodge of our vanishing vocabulary
The author is a word nerd, an expert on obscure terms, word etymologies, and the origins of strange expressions. This book is his latest collection of notes on 'disappearing language' - terms that are vanishing from common usage for a variety of reasons. Some go because the object they describe no longer exists (liberty-bodice and sixpence) and some are meanings that disappear because the word is now used to describe something quite different (chaperone was in medieval times a sort of cap.) For instance, you would never guess that the term slush fund originated in the mass of semi-liquid fat that floated on the top of boiling up unappetising salt pork on board a ship.
The book is a gem for people who enjoy both arcane knowledge and the strange linguistic depths of the everyday world. For instance, he points out that ell, the old way to measure woollen cloth, gets its length (22-23 inches) as well as its name from the fact that this is the approximate distance from the shoulder to the wrist. The Old English term for the arm is ell, which is why in its turn the place where it bends is called the elbow.
So if you're the sort of person who is interested in old, obscure words Gallimaufry is a cornucopia for you!
KC
January 2007 |
