(n.) A mingled mass; a confused mixture; a stew of various ingredients; a hodgepodge.
(n.) A blending of property for equality of division, as when lands given in frank-marriage to one daughter were, after the death of the ancestor, blended with the lands descending to her and to her sisters from the same ancestor, and then divided in equal portions among all the daughters. In modern usage, a mixing together, or throwing into a common mass or stock, of the estate left by a person deceased and the amounts advanced to any particular child or children, for the purpose of a more equal division, or of equalizing the shares of all the children; the property advanced being accounted for at its value when given.
Example Sentences:
(1) More than £600m has been spent on the massive universal credit project, intended to replace a hotchpotch of benefits and tax credit topups with a simple, single monthly payment to claimants that would include a "subsidy to work".
(2) As David Cameron prepared to deliver his "aspiration nation" speech to the Conservative conference in Birmingham, 110 miles away in Margaret Thatcher's former constituency a hotchpotch alliance of squatters, retired booksellers, local bloggers and international anti-capitalist activists whooped as a district judge blocked attempts to close a vibrant community library that has popped up in the shell of one controversially closed as part of the Conservative party's most radical experiment yet in shrinking local public services.
(3) The grimy streets of central St Pauli, a rough neighbourhood where sailors once passed their time on shore, are lined with a hotchpotch of trendy bars, clubs and music venues – as well as the handful of seedier establishments which made Hamburg infamous.
(4) The Marwood in The Lanes, for example, is a wonderful hotchpotch of reclaimed bits and pieces with old cupboard doors as table tops and even Apple Mac hard drive towers as stools.
(5) We knew what was required: in cases like ours, to stand any chance of meaningful success, you need a truckload of informational wherewithal, the will to fight, and the money to hire a good lawyer – which, at a stroke, scythes out millions of parents, who are left with only piecemeal help, and hotchpotch provision.
(6) We confront the problem with an unedifying hotchpotch of neuroses and political spasms that ensure we never truly see it in the round, never discuss it rationally and never get to grips with it.
(7) At the heart of every movie, all made on small budgets and drawing on a hotchpotch of British and European money, there has been a cause; from the Spanish civil war ( Land And Freedom ) to the Contra insurgency against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua ( Carla’s Song ), from trade union rights in the US ( Bread And Roses : the only film he has made in North America) to Ireland’s war of independence ( The Wind That Shakes The Barley ) and, most of all, the struggle for work, dignity and justice ( Raining Stones , Sweet Sixteen , It’s A Free World , My Name Is Joe , The Angels’ Share – basically all of them ).
(8) The deputy prime minister admits the plan has failed, blaming the creation of a "hotchpotch of schemes".
(9) Tarantino's genre hotchpotch might have made for something of a soundclash, but its highly entertaining din might be just the clarion call required to shake fresh life into the genre.
(10) Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, said Brown's statement was "nothing more than a hotchpotch of unrelated Whitehall schemes, a ministerial cut and paste job".
(11) She spent 18 months in the cabinet at the ministry of culture, overseeing a hotchpotch of responsibilities from ballet and broadband to table tennis and tourism.
(12) He, along with his predecessor, is too spineless to stand up for the gay minority, and exposes his church as incapable of living up to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 1, "all human beings are equal in dignity and rights", and nothing more than a hotchpotch of amoral stone-age superstition.
(13) It was a hotchpotch of a speech, providing neither inspiration nor challenge.
Potch
Definition:
(v. i.) To thrust; to push.
(v. t.) See Poach, to cook.
Example Sentences:
(1) And it's the same story across Europe: the populist right is on the march , along with a hotch-potch of anti-Brussels mavericks such as Italy's Beppe Grillo – and, in a handful of states, growing parties of the radical left.
(2) The Liberal Democrat education spokesman, David Laws, said: "This bill is a hotch potch of disconnected proposals thrown together to create an impression of momentum and direction which simply doesn't exist.
(3) EH: Instead of the hotch-potch situation we have where the director of public prosecutions sort of gives an indication of who may or may not be prosecuted, I would like the law changed specifically to permit assisted suicide, subject to safeguards: including, very importantly, that there's mental competence; that there's no coercion; that someone is terminally ill; and that they're suffering.
(4) HFA ideas will definitely work, say the proponents; if only we can objectively analyse the meaning and import of HFA, we could select what is feasible and reject the rest, advise the sceptics; HFA, insist the conservative and radical sceptics, is a terminological hotch-potch loaded with so many inexactitudes that the idea lacks direction, feasibility and acceptability even among the ranks of the majority of its proponents.
(5) Wider questions about the mix of housing, its density and whether Johnson’s Olympicopolis vision of a hotch potch of cultural, sporting and educational establishments will succeed in the long run will remain.