Unglued about zlepenec

[William Ryan]

If you search "ragtag team" and "ragtag government" you will get a fair 
number of examples which meet the criteria. But it is ragtag/rag-tag as 
an adjective - as a noun I think it usually only crops up as "rag-tag 
and bobtail".

Will

On 23/11/2011 20:44, E Wayles Browne wrote:
> A mishmash?
> A mishmosh?
> A grabbag?
> A hodgepodge?
> A patchwork?
> A hash?
> --
> Wayles Browne, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics
> Department of Linguistics
> Morrill Hall 220, Cornell University
> Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.
>
> tel. 607-255-0712 (o), 607-273-3009 (h)
> fax 607-255-2044 (write FOR W. BROWNE)
> e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu
>
> ________________________________________
> From: SEELANGS: Slavic&  East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] on behalf of Martin Votruba [votruba+slangs at PITT.EDU]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2011 1:32 PM
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> Subject: [SEELANGS] Unglued about zlepenec
>
> I wonder whether anyone could suggest an English equivalent, you don't need to speak Slovak to help.
>
> The question came up on a poli-sci panel at the ASEEES Convention, several native English speakers have been looking for an efficient word or phrase to use in their papers.
>
> The Slovak word zlepenec has a well-established terminological use in the sense of the English "conglomerate" (a type of rock), which is not a problem, but it has another meaning.
>
> It has been used in election campaigns for over a decade now to impute in a memorable way that some politicians are planning a coalition government that will be a cobbled-together, makeshift clump likely to come unglued at any time, or that they are running such a cabinet.
>
> The colloquial word is also used outside of politics from comments on the results of sloppy work, to hockey and soccer teams, to computer games, to art criticism. The noun (derived from the participle zlepeny, "glued together") has five features in contemporary Slovak that should preferably be conveyed by a matching English equivalent. It is expressive (colorful, catchy), readily understandable (and fairly common), pejorative, refers to something composed of incongruous parts, and implies that it was put together intentionally (human agency).
>
> Two possibilities:
>
> a jumbled clump -- lacks "intentionality"
> kludge -- not automatically pejorative and lacks "common use, understandability"
>
> Can someone, kindly, help with a better equivalent?
>
>
> Martin
>
> votruba "at" pitt "dot" edu
>
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