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pastiche: msg#00016culture.language.word-of-the-day
**************************************************************** See why Library Journal says that Merriam-Webster Unabridged.com "literally redefines the notion of what a dictionary can be..." http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged_sub.pl?refr=U_wod **************************************************************** The Word of the Day for February 17 is: pastiche \pass-TEESH\ noun *1 : a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work; also : such stylistic imitation 2 a : a musical, literary, or artistic composition made up of selections from different works : potpourri b : hodgepodge Example sentence; When Alfred Tennyson was only 14, he wrote a clever pastiche of Elizabethan drama. Did you know? It all began with macaroni. Our word "pastiche" is from French, but the French word was in turn borrowed from Italian, where the word is "pasticcio." "Pasticcio" is what the Italians called a kind of "macaroni pie" (from the word "pasta"). English-speakers familiar with this multilayered dish had begun to apply the name to various sorts of potpourris or hodgepodges (musical, literary, or otherwise) by the 18th century. For over a hundred years we were happy with "pasticcio," until we discovered the French word "pastiche" sometime in the latter part of the 1800s. Although we still occasionally use "pasticcio" in its extended meaning, "pastiche" is now much more common. *Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence. |
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