Omnium-Gatherum

WORD OF THE DAY

omnium-gatherum / noun / ahm-nee-um-GA-thuh-rum

Definition

: a miscellaneous collection (as of things or persons)

Examples

"Muldoon's Picnic—the critically acclaimed omnium-gatherum of music, storytelling, poetry, and more—has become a staple of New York's cultural diet." 

— BroadwayWorld.com, 4 Sept. 2018

"In his diary, a small, haphazardly kept omnium-gatherum, Arlen set down axioms, vocabulary words, and quotes from a wide-ranging reading list—Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle, Santayana, Nietzsche." 

— John Lahr, The New Yorker, 19 Sept. 2005

Did You Know?

English abounds in Latin phrases. They roll off the learned tongue like peas off a fork: tabula rasa, ab ovo, a posteriori, deus ex machina, ex cathedra, mea culpa, terra firma, vox populi, ad hominem, sub rosa. 

Omnium-gatherum belongs on that list too, right? Not exactly. 

Omnium-gatherum sounds like Latin, and indeed omnium (the genitive plural of Latin omnis, meaning "all") is the real thing. 

But gatherum is simply English gather with -um tacked on to give it a classical ring. 

A made-up word!  The first person that was known to have used it was John Croke, a lawyer who was educated at Eton and Cambridge in the 16th century.