Sunday Word: Mélange
mélange [mey-lahnzh, -lahnj]
noun:
a mixture sometimes of incongruous elements, a medley
Examples:
Made with a mouliné yarn which twists two colored threads together for a mélange effect, the cardigan is both chunky and cloud-like with a plush, wide shawl collar and tailored fit. (Gerald Ortiz, The Best Cashmere Sweaters for Men Are Literally Goated, GQ, November 2024)
The plot can sometimes feel like a chaotic mélange stretched too thin, but White, who wrote the Illumination avian charmer 'Migration', elevates the overall narrative by injecting doses of his perennial interest in the social codes of the rich. (Lovia Gyarkye, 'Despicable Me 4' Review: Gru's Family Grows in Illumination Animation That Serves Up Familiar Antics, The Hollywood Reporter, June 2024)
Baseball at the highest club level in Britain is competitive, but it's a league in which babysitters are just as important as balls and strikes. Teams are a mélange of locals and expats - some with college and minor league experience (Ken Maguire, In the UK's top baseball league, crowds are small, babysitters are key and the Mets are a dynasty, The Seattle Times, June 2024)
I invoke your consideration of the scene - the marble-topped tables, the range of leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demi-state toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or art; the sedulous and largess-loving garcons, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the mélange of talk and laughter - and, if you will, the Wurzburger in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherry sways on its branch to the beak of a robber jay. (O Henry, The Four Million)
Here he kept a retinue of Kaffirs, who were literally his slaves; and hence he would sally, with enormous diamonds in his shirt and on his finger, in the convoy of a prize-fighter of heinous repute, who was not, however, by any means the worst element in the Rosenthall mélange. (E W Hornung, The Amateur Cracksman)
Origin:
'a mixture, a medley,' usually 'an uncombined mingling on elements, objects, or individuals,' 1650s, from French mélange (15c.), from mêler 'to mix, mingle,' from Old French mesler 'to mix, meddle, mingle' (Online Etymology Dictionary)
Mélange got mixed into the melting pot of English back in the 1600s. It derives from the Middle French verb mesler, which means 'to mix.' 'Mélange' is actually one of several French contributions to the English body of words for miscellaneous mixtures. (Merriam-Webster).