Comprise is a transitive verb and means to be made up of, to consist of, and to include.  Examples:  The United States comprises 50 states.  A full deck comprises 52 cards.

Compose is also a transitive verb, but it has a slightly different meaning.  Compose is to make up the constituent parts of, to form the substance of something.  Examples:  Fifty states compose the United States.  Fifty-two cards compose a full deck.  Summary:  The whole comprises the parts.  The parts compose the whole.  You can use the phrase “is composed of,” but you cannot use the phrase “is comprised of.”  http://writingexplained.org/comprise-vs-compose-difference  NOTE that when you are in doubt, it is best to rewrite your sentence without using either comprise or compose.

Afrikaans is a Low Franconian West Germanic language descended from Dutch and spoken mainly in South Africa and Namibia.  There are also speakers of Afrikaans in Australia, Belgium, Botswana, Canada, Germany, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK, the USA, Zambia and Zimbabwe.  About 7.2 million people speak Afrikaans as a native language, and a further 8-15 million speak it as a second language.  Find alphabet, pronunciation, and links to resources at http://omniglot.com/writing/afrikaans.htm  

See also http://www.easyafrikaans.com/

Wall Street refers to the geographical concentration of financial service providers that constitutes New York’s financial district.  Its heart is the narrow thoroughfare of the same name in Lower Manhattan that is home to the New York Stock Exchange.  The term carries a wide spectrum of meanings that intersect geography, finance, and political economy.  The origins of Wall Street can be traced to the brushwood barricade erected by Peter Stuyvesant along the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam community of Dutch settlers in Lower Manhattan in 1653.  The “wall” was meant to protect the early settlers against attack from Lenape Indians, New England colonists, and the British (who dismantled it in 1699).  http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Wall_Street.aspx

MISHMASH   hodgepodge, jumble  Middle English & Yiddish; Middle English mysse masche, perhaps reduplication of mash mash; Yiddish mish-mash, perhaps reduplication of mishn to mix  first known use:  15th century  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mishmash  Find many recipes for mishmash soup on the Web. 

Search for these two phrases and find the short poems I enjoyed during National Poetry Month:  "given my heart a change of mood" and "woods are lovely dark and deep".

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  Theoretically, there are 676 possibilities for duoliteral words in the English language.  Of these, only about 100 are real words

os  (aws)  noun  1.  A mouth or an orifice. [plural ora]  2.  A bone.  [plural ossa]

For 1:  From Latin os (mouth)  Earliest documented use:  1859
For 2:  From Latin os (bone)  Earliest documented use:  1400

aa  (AH-ah)  noun  Lava having a rough surface.  From Hawaiian aa (to burn).  Earliest documented use:  1859.  Aa is one of the two kinds of lava typically found in Hawaiian volcanoes.  The other kind is pahoehoe, one with a smooth, ropy surface.

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day

From:  Bertil Magnusson   Subject:  os  The word os for mouth of a river was used in Swedish names for cities.  Uppsala was earlier East arOS and today a city Västerås (West-arOS) you can still hear os in the name.

From:  Max Montel  Subject:  os  One of my favorite Scrabble duoliterals!  It always makes me think of my beloved 7th grade Latin teacher Mrs. Ellis, who, when frustrated with a student, would say either “shut up-us” or more often, “shut your os.”

From:  Alan Abbey  Subject:  aa  I just couldn’t let this word -- one of my favorites for a number of reasons -- go unremarked.  It’s one of the first “abnormal” Scrabble words I learned and have since taught to my wife and children, who now use it regularly despite their initial objections and scorn.  Finally, while I have never been to Hawai’i, I became familiar with aa lava when I lived in Central Oregon, where aa is available in abundance, as well, and huge, train-sized tunnels have been carved out by volcanic action.  Crushed aa lava is used to “salt” roads in winter to improve traction.  Aa’s crystalline structure is excellent for icy conditions and doesn’t rot out vehicles as does rock salt.

From:  Peter Wing   Subject:  aa  There is no Hawaiian word “aa”.  Most people assume that the lava type, other than pahoehoe, is aʻa, but aʻa actually means “small root, vein, artery.../womb, offspring.  Time for a kahako:  ʻaʻā means to “burn, blaze, glow; fire ...”.  Now we’re getting somewhere.  ʻaʻā is the lava type (“lava” can also be luaʻi pele, ʻōahi, or ʻalā)!  And if you capitalize it, it is the star Sirius.

Thule was a far-northern location in classical European literature and cartography.  Though often considered to be an island in antiquity, modern interpretations of what was meant by Thule often identify it as Norway, an identification supported by modern calculations.  Other interpretations include Orkney, Shetland, and Scandinavia.  In the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Thule was often identified as Iceland or Greenland.  Another suggested location is Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea.  The term Ultima Thule in medieval geographies denotes any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world".  Sometimes it is used as a proper noun (Ultima Thule) as the Latin name for Greenland when Thule is used for Iceland.   The Greek explorer Pytheas is the first to have written of Thule, doing so in his now lost work, On the Ocean, after his travels between 330 BC and 320 BC.  He supposedly was sent out by the Greek city of Massalia to see where their trade-goods were coming from.  See graphics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule

vade mecum  noun  plural  vade mecums  1.  a book for ready reference  2.  something regularly carried about by a person  Latin, go with me  first known use:  1629

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vade%20mecum

Window blinds with slats existed in ancient Egypt and Pompeii long before the city of Venice was founded in AD 452.  Those slats were fixed, however.  In 1757, a French craftsman advertised blinds with adjustable slats, probably not his own invention but definitely a new idea.  By the end of the 1700s they were common in wealthier houses, shops, churches, and public buildings in England and the English colonies.  Only the English called them Venetian blinds.  In Italy, they were persiana; in France, jalousie a la persienne.  This suggests that they originated in the East, perhaps in the Persian Empire or beyond, in China or India.  They probably got the name Venetian Blinds courtesy of having come via Venice, a city that dominated trade with the East.  https://historymyths.wordpress.com/tag/origins-of-venetian-blinds/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1300  May 22, 2015  On this date in 1811, Giulia Grisi, Italian opera singer, was born.  On this date in 1987, the first ever Rugby World Cup kicked off with New Zealand playing Italy at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand.