hotchpotch

• hotchpot, hotchpotz, hotch-pot

From French hochepot, from hocher (“to shake”) + pot (“pot”); of Dutch or German origin. Compare Dutch hutspot.

• IPA^(key): /ˈhɒt͡ʃpɒt͡ʃ/

  • Audio (Southern England):

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hotchpotch (plural hotchpotches)

1. (property law) The blending together of property so as to achieve equal division, especially in the case of divorce or intestacy.

   Synonym: collation

2. (archaic) A kind of mutton broth with green peas instead of barley or rice.
3. Alternative form of hodgepodge (“miscellaneous collection”).
   • 1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC:

     A mixture or hotchpotch of many tastes.

   • 2019 December 18, Christian Wolmar, “Overdue investment and a better deal for Welsh railways”, in Rail, page 54:

     The railways in Wales are a bizarre hotchpotch of lines which, remarkably, do not even allow for a journey between the lines in the south and those in the north without venturing across the border into England.

4. Alternative form of hodgepodge (“mixture of ingredients”).

• farrago, hodgepodge, melange, mingle-mangle, mishmash, oddments, odds and ends, omnium-gatherum, ragbag
• See also Thesaurus:hodgepodge

• “hotchpotch”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.