World Anthology: A Bouquet of Perspectives

I love words and learning the history of words!  Words don't just come together to tell stories; there are also stories within the words.  And, the word "anthology" has a beautiful story to tell....

At first glance, "anthology" brings to mind the collections of literature from High School and College Language Arts courses, and indeed, a quick dictionary search reveals the definition:

anthology: a collection of selected literary pieces or passages or works of art or music

But, looking deeper into the roots of the word, we learn that "anthology" translates literally from the Greek and Latin, anthologia, as "flower-gathering."  Today's collections of works were at one time metaphorical flowers of verse, by various authors, gathered together in books rather than bouquets.