Written for Fandango’s One Word Challenge (FOWC), potpourri.
He’s done it again! The other day, he gave us one French word which has crept into the English language, and today he gives us another!
This one had me stumped, because I did not know the word pourri. But, hey, that is what Google is for! So I found that:
| Pot | = | Pot (I knew that one!) |
| Pourri | = | Rotten |
Okay, a rotten pot? I suppose I could get there. Potpourri is mostly dried flowers. I guess you could fit that. They were once living things, now they have been dried, so I suppose one might call that rotten.
There’s a far more interesting answer, though, that I picked up from Wikipedia:
Way back in the Napoleonic wars, French troops were fighting in Spain. The Spanish had a stew, which was basically made up of all sorts of everything; a real mish-mash. The soldiers took this recipe back to France, where it was called pot pourri. I guess that’s a reasonable explanation, too.
