From today's World Wide Words, ed. M. Quinion: "Under the heading of "Terms of a Keruer" (in a 1508 book, The Boke of Keruying) appeared a long list of the terms for carving any type of flesh, fowl or fish. The attentive reader (who was intended to be the master of a big household, not a presumably illiterate servant) was instructed that one should break a deer, disfigure a peacock, dismember a heron, lift a swan, unjoint a bittern, unbrace a mallard, thigh a pigeon, splat a pike, scull a tench and culpon a trout. But never, never carve. All this reminds one a little of the long lists of collective terms for birds: murmuration of starlings, unkindness of ravens, tiding of magpies, exaltation of larks -- which were first listed in The Book of St Albans of 1486. Speranza, The Swimming-Pool Library Bordighera ------- "We are bewitched by language --" Witters. ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html