Recently Shawn Cardwell and I were talking about, well...I can't remember what our main topic was, but the subject of the meaning of words overcame whatever else we were talking about.

I didn't care for words, one way or the other, during most of high school. Then one day Mrs. Smith brought up the idea of using different words to mean the same thing.

Flora and fauna, for example, generally means plants and animals. The word gamboling was mentioned as a favorite of mine.

The word means to run or jump in a lively way or to skip about in play. When lambs are seen jumping around the barnyard, on the hay bale, to the ground, run around a sheep and back on the hail bale, they are gamboling.

On a hunting trip with two other hunting partners a flock of around 50 turkeys came into view. Next two adult deer and one fawn entered the field. The fawn saw the turkeys and ran to them, jumped over the first one, ran around them in the middle of the flock and jumped over several more on the way back to the doe.

I found the only use of the word to reference the action of humans while reading one of Louisa May Alcott's books. She wrote, "The boys were gamboling in the front yard."

Another favorite word is brace. Of course we know a brace as a support or a prop, as to brace the wall with a 2 by 4. Or the man braced

himself with one hand and pulled himself up with the other. Brace also means two of a kind, as in a brace of ducks. I have seen written, "The hunter brought home several brace of doves." This sentence is confusing.

Why not say the correct number, such as "The hunter brought home 10 doves." Still the word is another tool in my toolbox for it can be used to reference anything, such as a brace of nails or a brace of anglers or a brace Dodge trucks.

The words to identify birds and animals are interesting. Take the bear family for example: The male is a boar, the female is a sow, the baby is a cub and a group of bears is a sleuth or sloth.

The alligator family goes bull, cow and hatchling, with a group of alligator young is a congregation. The house cat family goes tomcat,

queen, kitten, with a group of kittens being a kindle, such as a kindle of kittens.

A male crow is a cock, a female is a hen and the young are chicks. A group of crows is a murder. A writer may say in an article, "I was

perched in a tree when a murder of crows flew across the southern sky."

A goose family has the gander, goose and gosling with a group of geese on the ground being a gaggle and when flying in a V they are a wedge.

A male duck is a drake, a female is a duck, the young is a duckling and a bunch of ducks on the water is a raft, such as, "I saw a raft of ducks on Potholes Reservoir."

So you can see words are fascinating to me. They certainly aren't written to stump or confuse anyone, but they add interest to my writings and, perhaps, have people scrambling for the dictionary to .learn the definition of a term.