Definition of "hotchpot" []

• Law The gathering together of properties to ensure an equal division of the total for distribution, as among the heirs of an intestate parent. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Littleton, the first great writer on English real property-law, traces the origin of the phrase 'hotchpot' -- a familiar legal term -- to the archaic denomination of a pudding, in our English tongue."
• "He maintained with great vehemence that there was "no authority to throw the rights and liberties of this people into 'hotchpot' with the wild men of the Missouri, nor with the mixed, though more respectable, race of Anglo-Hispano-Gallo-Americans who bask on the sands in the mouth of the Mississippi.""
• "This root is much used among the Dutch people in a kind of loblolly or hotchpot, which they do eat, calling it _warmus_."