farcement

English

Etymology

farce +‎ -ment

Noun

farcement (countable and uncountable, plural farcements)

1. (obsolete) stuffing; forcemeat
   • 1623, Owen Feltham, Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political:

     They spoil a good dish with improper sauce and unsavory farcements.

2. (by extension, figurative) A mixture of various things crammed together.
   • 1883, Jacques de Mailles, History of Bayard the Good: Chevalier Sans Peur Et Sans Reproche, page 273:

     In short, it was a veritable farcement of questions that each man put to him.

   • 1899 December, M.H. Hatfield, “Dynamics of School Puberty”, in Mind and Body, volume 6, number 70, page 222:

     The process in the average public school is not education, but farcement, to borrow an old English word — a stuffing of undigested facts into unhealthy children, after the fashion of the geese of Strasburg.

3. A regional dish from Savoie consisting of slow-cooked grated potatoes with cream, pork or bacon, onion, and dried fruit.
   • 1989, Madeleine Kamman, Madeleine Kamman's Savoie, page 227:

     More and more local dishes are being revived nowadays, thanks to the wonderful work of Marie Thérèse Hermann; so look, because more and more country restaurants are sure to reintroduce farcements and farçons in the years to come, and I would not be surprised if a few in the Albertville-Moûtiers axis were to activate regional menus during the 1992 Olympics.

   • 1992, Reg Butler, Robin Mead, European Ski Resorts, page 48:

     The unwary can come unstuck, however: a friend, told not to miss the farcement of Saint Gervais, struggled manfully through a plateful of this stodgy, Christmas pudding-like dish before learning that the proper way to eat it is to cut off small pieces and fry them.

   • 2019, Christine Cappio, Gweimui’s Hong Kong Wet Markets:

     Another convivial and single-course dish that I am thinking of is “farcement”. One of our friends made it for us at the students' residence when my (future) husband and I were studying in Paris.

   • 2021, Lizzie Kamenetzky, Fireside Food for Cold Winter Night:

     I first ate farcement in a little piste-side restaurant in Les Houches in Chamonix as the snow bucketed down outside.