mishmash
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of mishmash
1425–75; late Middle English; gradational formation based on mash 1
Explanation
A mishmash is a random bunch of odds and ends. Many people have a mishmash of things in their basement or garage. A pile of old keys, one sock, four paper clips, and a water bottle? Total mishmash. Many houses have one kitchen drawer full of a mishmash of pens, rubber bands, carryout menus, and gum, for example. If you write a last-minute research paper, you might wind up with a mishmash of random ideas and opinions. The word was originally spelled with a hyphen, mish-mash, and before that it was mysse-masche, which had to do with mash, as in a bunch of soft food chucked together and fed to pigs. Another word for mishmash is hodgepodge.
Vocabulary lists containing mishmash
Stargirl
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"Mireya Mayor: Explorer/Correspondent"
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Wink
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“We wanted to be this mishmash of the MC5, and the Clash, and Iggy, you know, all our favorite bands, but we did not sound like that,” says Volpe.
From Salon ● Apr. 28, 2026
At the time, the bank was a mishmash of financial firms that had been recently cobbled together.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 18, 2026
This was a mishmash of ideas with no clear identification marks.
From BBC ● Feb. 11, 2026
And on Thursday, he raised the possibility of a mixed Supreme Court decision resulting in “some kind of a mishmash of, ‘you can do this, you can’t do that.’”
From MarketWatch ● Jan. 8, 2026
It was a Frankensteinish mishmash of microscope parts, glass, and 16-millimeter camera equipment from who knows where, plus metal scraps, and old motors from Shapiro’s junkyard.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
