cento

Definitions

A hotchpotch, a mixture; especially a piece made up of quotations from other authors, or a poem containing individual lines from other poems.

Equivalents

Examples

“But, Sʳ, I will no longer tire⟳ your patience wᵗʰ these monsters (the subject of every contemptuous pamphlet) then with the madness of the Anabaptists, Quakers, Fift Monarchy-men, and a cento of unheard of heresies besides, which, at present⟳, deform the once renowned Church of England, and approach⟳ so little to the pretended Reformation, which we in France have⟳ been made to believe⟳, that there is nothing more heavenly wide.”

“Now look⟳ out in the Gradus for Purus, and you find⟳ as the first synonime, lacteus; for coloratus, and the first synonime is purpureus. I mention⟳ this by way of elucidating one of the most ordinary processes in the ferrumination of these centos.”

“And Captain McCabe says: "I have⟳ always regarded the letter as a sort⟳ of 'cento' of odds and ends (badly put⟳ together) from Lee's genuine letters."”

“Paradise Lost, as Teskey observes, is a cento, a vast echo chamber of classical texts, all twisted into new shapes.”

CEFR level