www.alphadictionary.com

• postiche •

Pronunciation: pahs-teesh • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, adjective

Meaning: 1. A small hairpiece to cover up a bald spot, false hair, a toupee. 2. A sham, something that is false or counterfeit, a fake. 3. (Architecture) A mismatched decoration added later.

Notes: When you are in posh company and the words fake and counterfeit are too pedestrian to use, today's Good Word will fill in glamorously. It is French, after all! It is so recent that it has retained its French pronunciation and hasn't had time to create a family of derivations. But beware! Do not confuse this word with pastiche "hodgepodge".

In Play: We don't often hear today's word used in the sense of a wig, but when we wish to emphasize a hairpiece's intent to deceive, it fits perfectly: "Norman French wears a cheap postiche, one that is so obvious it should be embarrassing." We often don't think of our own fakery, all the places our word would fit today: "Her library contained only postiches, fake book spines resembling real books. How pretentious!"

Word History: This borrowed French word came to French from Italian posticcio. Posticcio is based on posto "place, position" from Latin positus, the past participle of ponere "to place". There should have been an intervening Vulgar (Street) Latin word posticius between positus and posticcio, but if such a word existed, we have no written evidence of it. Ponere, as was mentioned in the Word History of entrepot, is believed to be the remnants of an old compound (a)po-sinere "to leave off" comprising apo- "off, away" + sinere "to leave", of obscure origins. The loss of the initial A may be explained by 'aphesis', a process by which an initial unaccented vowel is dropped. A current example from English is opossum, which is pronounced 'possum in some regions.

Postiche is just the word I need at the moment. Our church is making extensive modifications and additions to the building. I feel they are not in concert with the original buildings but I didn’t have an adjective for it. Now I do. The expanded buildings will be postiche.

Surely a pastiche is a sincere imitation of a period's or artist's style rather than a hodgepodge?

Doc's example of fake library books made only of spines
reminded me of a tour I was on in England, Warwick
Castle. I volunteered to push a lady in a wheel chair
to meet the rest of the group who had to go up some
stairs. I pushed the lady down a hall way and the guide
opened a door where we were met by the group, mouths
agape as we came thru a fake door in a library made up
of just such postiche volumes.

Surely a pastiche is a sincere imitation of a period's or artist's style rather than a hodgepodge?

I think of it more as a mock up, a cheap imitation.

A "pastiche" is both an imitation and a hodgepodge. The two senses of "pastiche" with examples are discussed here:

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Pastiche

There you go, I had never in my born days heard of the (clearly original) hodge-podge meaning. You learn something new every day.

Still, I'd dispute my original meaning being a mock-up or ersatz imitation. I'd personally say pastiche is nearer the flip side of parody i.e. where a parody extracts the Michael a pastiche is an homage - it may be good or bad, but is a tribute to the essence of something.

In the literary world a pastiche may also be sort of a parody or an imitation. For example the image of Sam Spade as a tough talking guy has produced many pastiches. Some have even done this of Shakespeare and of Sherlock Holmes.

On the difference between a pastiche and a parody,
Mel Brooks' comedies Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein are mixtures of stock elements from the original Westerns and Horror Films, respectively, e.g., sheriffs, Indians, bad guys, castles, hunchbacks, etc. They are pastiches (mixtures) which make us laugh.

Swift's A Modest Proposal, on the other hand, is a parody (imitation of the style) of the well-reasoned essay, but there is nothing funny about it.

How often might faux and postiche be interchangeable? One meaning of postiche is a faux hairpiece....

I've seen and heard the word hodgepodge but never used it or given it much thought. When I hear or see it I'm reminded of the old PBS children's TV show Hodgepodge Lodge.

As for postiche, what immediately comes to mind is all the jokes late-night TV comedians tell about Donald Trump's hairpiece, usually referred to as "that thing on Donald Trump's head."