Zoo Bulters and Oranges

Today’s word of the day (sanctioned by Dictionary.com) is menagerie. This isn’t a difficult word. If it came up on my SAT six years ago, I would have been very happy. Of course they would have used like: menagerie is to woeful as limerick is to (satirical, dictatorial, supernal, yellow).

Anyway, I particularly like the sentence in which the site uses the word:
“Once, when he was too ill even to visit the zoo, Gerald was provided with a sort of substitute zoo of his own by the family butler, Jomen, who modeled a whole menagerie of animals [from clay]…” --Douglas Botting

Poor Gerald. He was so ill “once” he couldn’t even go to the zoo, the number one place I miss whenever I am sick, like today. “Sorry boss, I can’t go into work today. Hell I’m so sick, I can’t even go to the zoo!”

But hey, I have a “sort of substitute” of the zoo, if I can only command my servant to make one for me out of clay, because as you know, I am too sick to even play with clay. “How many have you made Jomen? Ten? That’s no damn menagerie. Keep going.”

Menagerie rhymes with orangerie, which is like a zoo for orange trees. And wherever there are zoos of orange trees, it smells like oranges. Florida is an orangerie. So why doesn’t “old people smell” smell more like oranges. It definitely does not.

You could also almost rhyme menagerie with la-aund-er-y. but I’ll have my zoo-butler take care of that.