English

A ragout or gallimaufry (sense 1) made with hearts and lungs and served with a Semmelknödel (bread dumpling) at a restaurant in Vienna, Austria

Alternative forms

• gallimaufrey (dated)

Noun

gallimaufry ‎(plural gallimaufries)

1. (dated) A hash of various kinds of meats, a ragout.
2. (figuratively) Any absurd medley.
   • 1985, J. Derrick McClure, “The Pinkerton Syndrome”, in Chapman: Scotland's Quality Literary Magazine, Edinburgh: Chapman Magazine and Publications, OCLC 55590049, pages 2–8; reprinted in Scots and Its Literature (Varieties of English around the World, General Series; 14), Amsterdam; Philadelphia, Pa., John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1996, ISBN 978-90-272-4872-5, page 57:

     The language of writers who are safely dead, and can be studied without fear of their exerting a subversive influence, bears the respectable label 'old Scots dialect'; the same tongue spoken by the living compatriots of these writers is 'bad grammar'. […] This attitude is of course not new; though perhaps seldom expressed so blatantly. I call it the Pinkerton syndrome, after one of the many memorable figures in out national gallimaufray of scholarly eccentrics. John Pinkerton (1758–1826), poet, critic, historian, dramatist and Celtophobe, in 1786 produced a book, entitled Ancient Scotish Poems, never before in print: […]

   • 2014, William Logan, “A Critic's Notebook”, in Guilty Knowledge, Guilty Pleasure: The Dirty Art of Poetry, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-16686-7, page 306:

     […] what students are taught instead is a gallimaufry of "texts".

Synonyms

• hodgepodge
• hotchpotch
• potpourri

Translations