kitchen-sink

adjective

kitch·​en-sink ˈki-chən-ˈsiŋk 

1

: being or made up of a hodgepodge of disparate elements or ingredients

2

chiefly British : portraying or emphasizing the squalid aspects of modern life

the kitchen-sink realism of contemporary British drama

—Current Biography

Synonyms

• assorted
• eclectic
• heterogeneous
• indiscriminate
• magpie
• miscellaneous
• mixed
• motley
• patchwork
• piebald
• promiscuous
• raggle-taggle
• ragtag
• varied

Examples of kitchen-sink in a Sentence

many of the bartender's recipes are for kitchen-sink cocktails that sound like they would be a waste of good liquor

Recent Examples on the Web

To purist conservationists, this may look like a kitchen-sink approach. —Christine Ro, Forbes, 12 Dec. 2024

Get The Recipe 04 of 12 Santa's Kitchen-Sink Cookies Like all kitchen-sink recipes, these cookies are designed to be customizable. —Symiah Dorsey, Southern Living, 5 Dec. 2024

The pic spawned a 1982 kitchen-sink sequel that brought most of the band back together and continued the knee-slapping or face-palming punchlines, unrepentant sight gags and inexpressive line readings — fourth wall be damned. —Erik Pedersen, Deadline, 26 Nov. 2024

Bay was just collecting the check at this point, and the kitchen-sink approach to mythology — now factoring in the staff of Merlin, Stonehenge, a new Über-villain named Unicron, the aforementioned Witwiccan connection to Harriet Tubman — made for something too bloated to even be fun. —Jordan Crucchiola, Vulture, 25 Sep. 2024

That strange harmony, made all the stranger for its place in a kitchen-sink tragedy about the myopia of capital punishment, rattles your soul from the inside out. —Indiewire Staff, IndieWire, 12 Aug. 2024

Lawmakers should take a kitchen-sink approach to housing, report says There's no single solution that will eliminate the construction bottleneck, the report found. —Genevieve Redsten, Journal Sentinel, 25 July 2024

Greene took a kitchen-sink approach to her hectoring. —Robin Abcarian, The Mercury News, 11 June 2024

Bird After dipping into documentary (Cow), television (Transparent, Big Little Lies) and U.S. youth subculture (American Honey), Andrea Arnold’s new feature appears to be a return to the Brit kitchen-sink realism of her breakout works Red Road and Fish Tank. —David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 14 May 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1954, in the meaning defined at sense 2