Word of the Day: pasticcio

pasticcio (n)

A work or style consisting of borrowed fragments, ingredients,
or motifs assembled from various sources; a potpourri.

"What did it matter if the work were a spurious thing, a pasticcio, a poor victim which had been pulled this way and that, changed, cut, added to?"
--Robert Smythe Hichens, The Way of Ambition

"On one occasion an old man sang quite glibly a tune which was in reality a pasticcio of three separate shanties all known to me."
--Sir Richard Runciman Terry, The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties

Hey, all you wordcatchers, I know this sounds like something you might order in an Italian restaurant, but it appears in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, so I think it's worth featuring as my WotD. (I try to stick to English lexemes here.)

I've just started reading a book (or, perhaps you might call it a monograph) entitled Old World Politics, New World Prophecy, which is billed as an explanation of Inland Empire, the very confusing but weirdly fascinating (to me anyway) film/puzzle by David Lynch, which is sort of a cinematic pasticcio. The author delves into Eastern European mythology and other arcana to develop a theory of what the hell that was all about, and even apparently argues that the talking-rabbit sitcom scenes were not non sequiturs. (If something is not a non, is it a plain old sequitur?) It's received excellent reviews from the Lynch mob, so I'm looking forward to being enlightened.