![]() ![]() ![]() On Princeton’s campus, you will surely see an ambush of tigers and a scurry of squirrels, but collective nouns apply to human animals as well. In more tropical climes, you might encounter a flamboyance of flamingoes, a conspiracy of lemurs, a barrel of monkeys, or a shrewdness of apes. Should you be tromping through the forest or driving in the country, you might come across a murder of crows, a sloth of bears, a clowder of cats, a clutch of chickens, a dole of doves, a raft of ducks, a convocation of eagles, a business of flies, a gaggle of geese, a kindle of kittens, a scourge of mosquitos, a parliament of owls, a murmuration of starlings (see photo), or a bale of turtles. And the tradition of naming them dates back to the Boke of Saint Albans, written by Dame Juliana Berners in 1486, with an introduction added by William Blades in the 1800s. These collective terms for animals are called “terms of venery” or hunting. It turns out that we drove past a bevy of swans or, if you’re a little more fanciful, a lamentation of swans. I knew there was a special collective noun for such a phenomenon after all, we use collective nouns every day (a staff of employees, a panel of experts, a team of players).Ī bunch of bees is called a swarm, and a group of birds is generally called a flock, but swans? When we got home, I did a little research. It seemed magical that there would be so many of them in one spot, as if a wizard had turned a group of farmers into these beautiful birds in some fairytale. The following are a comprehensive live list of animal collective nouns, for your reference and ease of perusal.A Murder of Crows and Other Terms of Venery by Stephanie Whetstoneĭriving to the shore a few weeks ago, my husband and I passed a wide field full of swans. When it comes to animals, things can get a bit tricky, since animals are creatures that roam either on their own, like a lone wolf other times, they live in groups, such as any of the herd species.īecause of the variety of ways in which animals live with respect to quantity or count, English has evolved to reflect their ways of social or asocial living. In English, nouns (which are names given to people, places, things and ideas) come in two kinds, singular or plural, as mentioned in the above section. We’re not talking about the band, Animal Collective, though they do make good music. Plural nouns refers to more than one person, place, thing or idea. Grammar rule: singular nouns refers to one subject or object. Language is structured to reflect the count of subjects (or sentence objects) by distinguishing between when there is one of something, or more than one: i.e., singular and plural noun forms. When we speak or write, we communicate in count or number even if we don’t consciously realize it. We hope you find these names entertaining, at the very least. ![]() ![]() Regale in the absurdity of these animal collective group names, such as an implausibility of gnus, or a mischief of mice. It’s safe to say that this list is pretty wild, pun intended. A list of all the animal collective group namesĭid you know that animals have collective noun terms? This post is ALL about them: we cover the names for animal collectives, broken down by species and animal type. ![]()
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