bouillabaisses

Noun

bouillabaisse (countable and uncountable, plural bouillabaisses)

1. A type of fish soup or stew from Provence, France.
   • And here's an inn, not rich and splendid, / But still in comfortable case; / The which in youth I oft attended, / To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse. // This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is— / A sort of soup, or broth, or brew, / Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, / That Greenwich never could outdo; /...1849, [William Makepeace Thackeray], “The Ballad of Bouillabaisse”, in Punch, or The London Charivari, volume XVI, London: Published at the office, 85, Fleet Street, →OCLC, page 67, column 1
2. (broadly, figuratively) A chaotic, disorganized mixture; a confused hodgepodge.
   • La Sirène du Mississipi is a synthesis of the work he [François Truffaut] has been doing during the preceding six or eight years, a great bouillabaisse of [Jean] Renoir, [Alfred] Hitchcock, [Humphrey] Bogart, [Antoine] Doinel, [...]1976, James Monaco, The New Wave: Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 68

   Synonyms:

   bric-a-brac, catch-all, clamjamfrey, cocktail, rummage, salad, anthology, gallery, gatherum, congeries