hotchpotch: [15] Hotchpotch is an alteration (for the sake of the rhyme) of an earlier hotchpot. This was borrowed from an Old French compound made up of hocher ‘shake’ (perhaps from Frankish hottisōn) and pot ‘pot’. So originally the word meant literally ‘shake the pot’ – presumably to blend an assortment of ingredients, although it is not certain that the allusion was in the first instance culinary. (Old French hocher, incidentally, may well have been the source of the Scottish verb hotch ‘shake, fidget’ [14].)
