Borrowed from Latin farrāgō (“mixed fodder; mixture, hodgepodge”), from far (“emmer (a kind of wheat), coarse meal, grits”). Doublet of farro.

• IPA^(key): /fəˈɹeɪɡoʊ/, /fəˈɹɑːɡoʊ/

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farrago (plural farragos or farragoes)

1. A collection containing a confused variety of miscellaneous things.

   Synonyms: hodgepodge, melange, mingle-mangle; see also Thesaurus:hodgepodge

   • 1775 January 17 (first performance), [Richard Brinsley Sheridan], The Rivals, a Comedy.[…], London: […] John Wilkie,[…], published 1775, →OCLC, Act II, scene i, page 20:

     Yet do I carry every vvhere vvith me ſuch a confounded farago of doubts, fears, hopes, vviſhes, and all the flimſy furniture of a country Miſs's brain!

   • 1885 July, “A Forgotten Pamphleteer”, in Tinsleys’ Magazine, volume 37, London: Tinsley Brothers, page 84:

     Back in Paris, where all men adrift naturally float, he succeeded in publishing a fantastic novel, “Sortie d’un Rêve,” a farrago of all that is most foolish in the earlier romantic authors, with here and there a racy turn—“a personal note,” M. Zola would say.

   • a. 1900, William Barclay Squire, “Balfe, Michael William”, 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”, 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 September, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, uniform edition, London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press,[…], published 1931 (April 1935 printing), →OCLC, 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.

   • 2007 June 15, Oliver Burkeman, “The rise of the anti-self-help movement”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     It has been pointed out in this space before that a number of the titles you'll find shelved under self-help in your local bookshop are, on closer examination, farragos of wooden-headed tripe, written by mountebanks and halfwits.

   • 2013 May 10, James Ball, “US government attempts to stifle 3D-printer gun designs will ultimately fail”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     And this is where the larger problem lies: when states try to enforce impossible bans, everyone loses. 3D printing farragoes have all the hallmarks of the absolute worst kind of ineffectual ban: one which encourages overly draconian laws that carry huge side effects, and that ultimately to have little to no effect.

   • 2023 December 31, Jasper Jolly, “A Farage farrago, crypto crime and rivers of cash: the 2023 Observer business awards”, in The Guardian‎^[3]:

     The farrago may have deprived Farage of a fancy bank account, but Alison Rose, chief executive of Coutts’ less exclusive owner, NatWest, gave him something much more valuable: the moral high ground.

• farraginous

• farro

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

far (“emmer”) +‎ -āgō

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [farˈraː.ɡoː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [farˈraː.ɡo]

farrāgō f (genitive farrāginis); third declension

1. a kind of hash, mixed fodder for animals
2. mixture, hodgepodge

Third-declension noun.

• “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, Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “farrago”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

farrago m (plural farragos)

1. archaic form of fárrago

• “farrago”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025

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