Readers respond to collective terms: Terms of Generis used to be a trivia-type game. One of my favorite books: http://www.amazon.com/Exaltation-Larks-Ultimate-James-Lipton/dp/0140170960 For example, most people don't know that A Comedy of Errors isn't a funny story about errors. It means a collection of errors.

. . . one of my favorite books, A Bundle of Beasts, containing poems on collective nouns / groups of animals. I especially like a crash of rhinoceros and a knot of toads (if I remember correctly).

When workers in a McDonald’s restaurant in Canton, Ohio, opened their paychecks this month, they found a pamphlet printed on a McDonalds letterhead urging them to vote for the Republican candidates for governor, Senate and Congress, or possibly face financial repercussions. The pamphlet said: “If the right people are elected, we will be able to continue with raises and benefits at or above the current levels. If others are elected, we will not.” It then named three Republican candidates after stating, “The following candidates are the ones we believe will help our business move forward.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/us/politics/30ohio.html?src=me

Monticello is on a mountaintop, just outside Charlottesville, Va. Thomas Jefferson's 5,000-acre plantation served not only as his food supply, but also as a living laboratory. Jefferson grew plants from all over the world, including interesting vegetables such as sea kale, cardoon, Caracalla beans, Florence fennel, fava beans and crowder peas. Jefferson was willing to experiment. While he grew 330 varieties of vegetables and 170 varieties of fruit, they weren't all successes. Jefferson was not afraid of failure. He believed that if one thing failed, it is replaced by the success of another. In fact, he embraced every failure as a learning opportunity --something we modern-day gardeners should appreciate as well. Jefferson believed in adding soil-building components such as compost, manure and decomposing leaves to his soil because he noticed that the plants flourished in that environment, suffered from fewer pests and diseases, and were more drought-resistant. Today we know that organic matter promotes healthy biological activity within the soil, a complex web of life ranging from microbes to earthworms. http://scrippsnews.com/content/gardener-home-thomas-jeffersons-organic-garden

Roxbury Russet has a nutty flavor. Strawberry Chenango smells like roses. Cornish Gilliflower is reminiscent of clove. Farmers and chefs treat them like fine wine, but these are apples—"heritage" or "heirloom" varieties that were common on American tables as far back as colonial times but today are rarely tasted. Now, a number of orchards and apple historians are growing these old varieties again and promoting them to restaurants, distributors and grocers. "Heirloom" is a potent food-marketing buzzword, helping once-forgotten plant varieties and even animal breeds command premium prices. Heirloom apples were regionally popular for generations but have ceased to be cultivated commercially. From the 1950s on, mass-production farming favored reliable apples that could stand up to shipping, and stores have been dominated by apples from fewer than a dozen familiar types, including McIntosh, Red Delicious, Fuji and Granny Smith. The heirlooms, in contrast, with freckles, stripes and other visual peculiarities, buck the modern idea of what an apple looks like. Often priced in the $3.99-a-pound range, they can cost up to twice as much as common apple varieties. They are coming back strong nonetheless, as the increasing numbers of people who cook and eat at home seek out novel ingredients. Unusual appearance can be a problem at some more-commercial venues. "The heirloom apples look different. The russeting, how they're multicolor—those are normally no-nos and cause for rejection in other varieties," says Michael Rozyne, co-director of the Canton, Mass., nonprofit Red Tomato, which works to get local farm produce into mainstream supermarkets. "We can't sell them very well unless we create the romance and the story and the history that goes with it," he adds.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052702303467004575574262924513410.html

Quote Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English politician and writer

Here are words made with various combining forms to expand your verbal repertoire. Feel free to mix and match them; try various combinations and permutations to bring a little variety, a little zest, to your lingo. The combining forms we are using this week are:
ventr- (belly), poso- (what quantity), onoma- (name), hagio- (holy), miso- (hate), -logy (study), -mancy (divination), -latry (worship), and -gamy (marriage).
ventriloquism (ven-TRIL-uh-kwiz-uhm) noun
1. The art or practice of speaking without moving lips so that the voice seems to be coming from somewhere else.
2. The expression of one's views through another person, used as a literary technique. Literally speaking, ventriloquism is speaking from the stomach, from the former belief that the voice was produced from the ventriloquist's belly. The word is derived from Latin ventriloquus (ventriloquist), from ventr- (belly) + loqui (to speak). Earliest recorded use: 1797.
posology (puh-SOL-uh-jee, po-) noun The study of drug dosages. From Greek poso- (how much) + -logy (study). Earliest recorded use: 1786. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Feedback:
From: Kate Karp Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--onomancy Dionne Warwick went through this -- she either dropped or added the e at the end of her name. Don't know how much good it did. Roger McGuinn of the Byrds was born as Jim McGuinn. He tells the story at his concerts of how he decided that Jim just didn't fit him and he wanted something extraordinary. He was practicing an Eastern religion at the time, and his guru told him that he felt a vibe from the letter R. He asked McGuinn to come up with a name with that initial consonant that resounded with his passion. McGuinn adored space travel and science fiction (check out the Byrds' clever "Mr. Spaceman"), so he thought up things like robot, rocket, rrrrrrrrrr, and roger, the latter being the radio call for "received and understood".
From: Rudy Rosenberg Sr Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--onomancy My father was born in Poland and his name was Rozenberg. When he arrived in Belgium where I was born, the name was changed to Rosenberg that was pronounced as if it still had the "Z". (Is there a term for when the S is S and when it turns into a Z?)