A selection of cheese and biscuits

Speranza

M. Quinion in this week's "World Wide Words":

"Number sense At one hotel during my recent trip, the dinner menu offered a “selection of cheese and biscuits”. Disappointingly, the plate that came contained merely two types of cheese. I felt that a selection in this sense implies at least three items, a view that was supported by the dictionaries, which define it along the lines of “a range of things from which a choice may be made”. It would have been entertainingly pedantic, though I suspect ultimately futile, to have tried to convince the hotel of this significant linguistic fact. Perhaps it considered the biscuits to be part of the mix?"

I think there may be an implication (or 'implicature', as Grice pedantically prefers) there. Strictly, if you just get ONE type of cheese, a SELECTION has been made by the hotel.

Vide,

Urmson, (incidentally), "On grading" (apples, and cheese), in Flew.

We have discussed this with free-will specialist R. Doyle, etc.