I am always quite amazed at the word ‘cull‘. The word has two meanings that are totally different and unrelated:
- Select from a large quantity; obtain from a variety of sources
- – anecdotes culled from Greek and Roman history
- Reduce the population of (a wild animal) by selective slaughter
- – he sees culling deer as a necessity
- – kangaroo culling
Somehow when I read a passage like this,
Culled from the diaries of some of the most famous…
My brain automatically registers the ‘cull’ word with slaughtering of animals. I wonder why. Do our brain always have one meaning of a word that is always registered first every time we read? And only after reading the whole sentence, our brain then search for the other more appropriate meanings?
Or maybe it is just my brain only.
