Dictionary

cento en · NOUN

Pronunciation

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Etymology

From Latin cento (“patchwork garment”).

Meanings

1. A hotchpotch, a mixture; especially a piece made up of quotations from other authors, or a poem containing individual lines from other poems.
   • 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. 1817, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “The Motives of the Present Work—Reception of the Author’s First Publication—The Discipline of His Taste at School—The Effect of Contemporary Writers on Youthful Minds—[William Lisle] Bowles’s Sonnets—Comparison between the Poets before and since Mr. [Alexander] Pope”, in Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, volume I, London: Rest Fenner, […], →OCLC, footnote, page 21:
   • 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." 1915 September 14, Charles A. Graves, “The Forged Letter of General Lee”, in Southern Historical Society Papers, New Series, number 40, page 124:
   • 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. 1659, John Evelyn, “A Character of England, as It was Lately Presented in a Letter to a Nobleman of France. […] The Third Edition.”, in William Upcott, compiler, The Miscellaneous Writings of John Evelyn, […], London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1825, →OCLC, page 156:
   • Paradise Lost, as Teskey observes, is a cento, a vast echo chamber of classical texts, all twisted into new shapes. 2007, William Poole, “Out of his Furrow”, in London Review of Books, volume 29, number 3, page 16:

Forms

Deriveds

centonical · centonism · centoism · centoist