motley.

1. Made up of varied, often incongruous elements.

2. Multicolored or patchwork clothing traditionally associated with a jester, or the fabric used for it.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• a motley collection
• a motley crowd

On the page

A motley collection of chairs surrounded the immaculate table.

The market’s motley crowd flowed between stalls built in different decades.

Usage notes

Primary category: setting. Forms: Comparative more motley; superlative most motley where gradation is meaningful. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.