Catchall
a bag, basket, or other receptacle for odds and ends.
something that covers a wide variety of items or situations:
The list is just a catchall of things I want to see or do on vacation.
covering a wide variety of items or situations:
The anthology is a catchall collection.
Contemporary Examples
Kocurek said he was told he had been terminated “for cause,” a catchall term that allows dismissal for just about any reason.
Two Texas Regulators Tried to Enforce the Rules. They Were Fired. David Hasemyer, InsideClimate News December 8, 2014
An accusation of witchcraft is vague enough to serve as a kind of catchall for discontent.
Will Saudi Arabia Execute Guest Workers for ‘Witchcraft’? Michael Schulson March 28, 2014
Historical Examples
Most of you in this Chamber didn’t know what was in this catchall bill and report.
Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to 2006 Various
The IMF’s propensity to provide a “catchall” one-measure-fits-all panacea is nothing short of shortsighted and disastrous.
After the Rain Sam Vaknin
This department is a catchall for a lot of items, and it hides a lot of leaks and wastes in business.
Dollars and Sense Col. Wm. C. Hunter
Read Also:
- Catchcry
noun (pl) -cries (Austral) a well-known, frequently used phrase, esp one associated with a particular group, etc
- Catcher
a person or thing that catches. Baseball. the player stationed behind home plate, whose chief duty is to catch pitches not hit by the batter. a member of an aerialist team, as in a circus, who hangs head down from a trapeze and catches another member who has completed a jump or somersault through the […]
- Catcher's box
box1 (def 16d).
- Catcher-in-the-rye
a novel (1951) by J. D. Salinger.
- Catcher-resonator
See under Klystron. a brand name for a vacuum tube containing an electron gun, a resonator that changes the velocity of the electron beam in accordance with a signal (buncher resonator) a drift tube in which the electron velocity does not change, another resonator that abstracts energy from the electron beam (catcher resonator) and an […]