anthology

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A collection of literary works, such as poems or short stories, especially a collection from various authors.

   Malkin and Stacks, along with Robert Dallek, James McPherson and other contributors to the anthology (edited by Robert Cowley) take such questions as the jumping-off points for exercises in counterfactuality, the historian's term for speculation about how the past might have unfolded if a particular event had happened otherwise.

2. 2
   noun

   a collection of selected literary passages

3. 3
   noun

   A work or series containing various stories with no direct relation to one another.

4. 4
   noun

   An assortment of things.

5. 5
   noun

   The study of flowers.

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ἀνθολογία (anthología, “flower-gathering”), from ἀνθολογέω (anthologéō, “I gather flowers”), from ἄνθος (ánthos, “flower”) + λέγω (légō, “I gather, pick up, collect”), coined by Meleager of Gadara circa 60 BCE, originally as Στέφανος (στέφανος (stéphanos, “garland”)) to describe a collection of poetry, later retitled anthology – see Greek Anthology. Anthologiai were collections of small Greek poems and epigrams, because in Greek culture the flower symbolized the finer sentiments that only poetry can express. By surface analysis, antho- + -logy.