hotchpot

[ hoch-pot ]

noun

, Law.

1. the bringing together of shares or properties in order to divide them equally, especially when they are to be divided among the children of a parent dying intestate.

hotchpot

/ ˈhɒtʃˌpɒt /

noun

1. property law the collecting of property so that it may be redistributed in equal shares, esp on the intestacy of a parent who has given property to his children in his lifetime

Word History and Origins

Origin of hotchpot¹

1250–1300; Middle English hochepot < Anglo-French, literally, shake-pot. See hotch, pot ¹

Word History and Origins

Origin of hotchpot¹

C14: from Old French hochepot, from hocher to shake, of Germanic origin + pot ¹

Example Sentences

Hotchpotch, hoch′poch, Hotchpot, hoch′pot, Hodgepodge, hoj′poj, n. a confused mass of ingredients shaken or mixed together in the same pot: a kind of mutton-broth in which green peas take the place of barley or rice.—Hotchpot, a commixture of property in order to secure an equable division amongst children.

From Project Gutenberg

However, after compliments, and more protestations from its owner, the Strad was brought into hotchpot, and Lætitia abdicated.

From Project Gutenberg

Hotchpot.—Will you kindly tell me what is the derivation of the local term hotchpot, and when it was first used?

From Project Gutenberg

My companions marvelled greatly at the severe curvature of the extremities of the cycle-track, which were shaped like the interior of a huge bowl, and while I was demonstrating to them how, from scientific considerations and owing to the centrifugal forces of gravitation, it was not possible for any rider to become a loser of his equilibrium—lo and behold! two of the competitors made the facilis descensus, and were intermingled in the weltering hotchpot of a calamity.

From Project Gutenberg

Conceive, Sir, the disgustful result to one saturated to the skin of his teeth in best English masterpieces of immaculate and moderately good prose extracts and dramatic passages, published with notes for the use of the native student, at weltering in a hotchpot and hurley-burley of arbitrarily distorted and very vulgarised cockneydoms and purely London provincialities, which must be of necessity to him as casting pearls before a swine!

From Project Gutenberg