Word of the Day

: August 12, 2009

florilegium

noun flor-uh-LEE-jee-um

What It Means

: a volume of writings : anthology

florilegium in Context

This florilegium of British poetry up to 1760 includes the classics that we have all come to love along with a few relatively unknown gems that are sure to delight and inspire.

Did You Know?

Editors who compile florilegia (to use the plural form of today's word) can be thought of as gathering a bouquet of sweet literary blossoms. English speakers picked up "florilegium" from a New Latin word that derives from Latin "florilegus," which can be translated as "culling flowers." In fact, "florilegium" initially applied to a collection of flowers, and later to books about flowers, but it wasn't long before the word began to be used for (as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it) "a collection of the flowers of literature." And "florilegium" isn't the only English collecting term with a floral heritage; its synonym "anthology" comes from the Greek word for "flower gathering."