menagerie

noun me·nag·er·ie \ mə-ˈnaj-rē , -ˈna-jə- also -ˈnazh-rē , -ˈna-zhə- \

|Updated on: 14 Aug 2018

Examples: menagerie in a Sentence

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of menagerie

1 a : a place where animals are kept and trained especially for exhibition

b : a collection of wild or foreign animals kept especially for exhibition

2 : a varied mixture

a menagerie of comedians
—TV Guide

A menagerie of grotesque statues stood in the garden.

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Examples of menagerie in a Sentence

a menagerie of rare creatures
the living room is eclectically furnished with a menagerie of garage-sale finds

Recent Examples of menagerie from the Web

To see our full menagerie, from a robot bat to a four-legged robot that mimics evolution itself, check out the video above.

— matt simon, WIRED, "How Roboticists Are Copying Nature to Make Fantastical Machines," 28 June 2018
Greer says as she and her menagerie walk toward her husband.

— esther mobley, San Francisco Chronicle, "On the far Sonoma coast, distinctive Cabernet comes from an unlikely vineyard," 20 Apr. 2018
Buy Photo Philadelphia is like a zoo with a menagerie of taxes, licenses, and fees.

— stu bykofsky, Philly.com, "Welcome to Taxadelphia, where you pay more than you realize | Stu Bykofsky," 10 July 2018
Time and again, Ms. Tyler gives us the equivalent of a hunter, mermaid, bear and lynx: an unlikely menagerie of souls fused by clandestine but urgent appetites.

— brad leithauser, WSJ, "‘Clock Dance’ Review: The Family Maker," 6 July 2018
The elaborate petting zoo includes a herd of tame fallow deer along with a menagerie that includes reindeer, wallabies, marmosets, coatimundis, mini horses, pygmy goats and more.

— roger naylor, azcentral, "Arizona road trip: Williams has Route 66, Bearizona and cool summer fun," 15 June 2018
This eclectic town 6: Beckoning menagerie of those who paused.

— hal boedeker, OrlandoSentinel.com, "90.7 WMFE plans fund drive, seeks ZipOdes," 9 Apr. 2018
Twelve pits in the tomb also yielded bones from an exotic menagerie, including an Asiatic black bear, a leopard, a lynx, a crane—and an unusual-looking gibbon.

— National Geographic, "Ancient Royal Tomb Yields Strange New Ape Species," 21 June 2018
The campers and their menagerie were one of the more colorful examples of rule-breaking that's making wildlife advocates worry about the city's newest natural area, a fragile 60-acre wetlands in South Anchorage that opened to the public in 2013.

— devin kelly, Anchorage Daily News, "Worries about wildlife prompt push for dog ban in South Anchorage estuary," 27 May 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'menagerie.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

Back in the days of Middle French, ménagerie meant "the management of a household" or farm or "a place where animals are tended." By the 1670s, English speakers had adopted the word but dropped its housekeeping aspects, applying it specifically to the places where circuses and other exhibitions kept show animals. Later, the word was generalized to refer to any varied mixture, especially one that includes things that are strange or foreign to one's experience.