This week’s theme
Words related to books

This week’s words
bibliotaph
bouquiniste
florilegium
bibliolater
pandect

The gift of words
Send a gift subscription
It takes a minute! It's free.

---

A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(flor-uh-LEE-jee-uhm, FLOR-)

MEANING:

noun: A compilation of excerpts; anthology.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin florilegium, from flor (flower) + legere (to gather). Ultimately from the Indo-European root leg- (to collect), which also gave us lexicon, lesson, lecture, legible, legal, select, cull, subintelligitur (something that is not stated but understood), prolegomenon (an introduction to a text), lignify (to turn into wood), and lection (a version of a text in a particular edition). Earliest documented use: 1621.

NOTES:

If you think of compiling an anthology as arranging flowers in a bouquet, you wouldn’t be far off: the word comes to us from Greek anthos (flower). Florilegium is the Latin equivalent, from flor (flower). Both words have also been applied to a collection of flowers or a collection of writing about flowers. Now, you might think a bouquiniste (a dealer in old and used books) has a similar connection too, but no, this word comes to us from French bouquin (slang for book).

USAGE:

“I was intrigued to find a florilegium of Romantic poetry tucked under a pot of hide glue and was about to settle in to read when I heard a roar of outrage.”
Deanna Raybourn; A Curious Beginning; Berkeley; 2015.

See more usage examples of florilegium in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: