The choice of word for the collective noun seems to incline towards some characteristic feature. The pride of lions appears in the OED with its first citation from the Book of St Albans and the next citations from the early 1900s, in the context of safaris in Africa, so it has taken on a real life in the English language, but others, like the parliament of owls and the murder of crows, dwell in the half-life. The exaltation of larks, the unkindness of ravens, the chattering of choughs. Many of the old favourites that have endured for centuries without any real existence in the English language appear in Juliana’s collection. From this we leap to modern inventions such as a crash of rhinoceroses, a concern of social workers, a consternation of mothers. Who else but the prioress could have come up with a superfluity of nuns? Other whimsicalities were the barren of mules, the skulk of foxes, the state of princes. There is no conclusive evidence of the existence of Juliana because some priory records are missing for that period but we are led to believe that she was from an aristocratic family and was extremely fond of hunting. Not only did she put together a list of collective nouns for ‘beestings and fowles’, but she invented some in a humorous vein, thus setting in motion a favourite game for language lovers for centuries to come. Juliana seems to have written the section on hunting although the rest of it comes from other sources. It also goes under the title of The Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Blasing of Arms and was a bestseller in its day. The first compilation of collective nouns was made by a prioress, Juliana Berners, who is credited with authorship of a book published in 1486 entitled The Book of St Albans. There are not even inspired guesses that seem plausible. We don’t know the origin of the word flock, though we can date it back to Old English and know that it is related to Old Norse. Originally it referred to a group of people but then it was used of animals, and specifically of sheep. The rivalry between male rhinoceroses becomes especially apt when the rowdy ungulates are characterized as a crash of rhinos. The word flock is similarly old but worked the other way around. A Barrel of Monkeys brings together more than one hundred collective nouns for animals, from a bloat of hippopotamuses to a caravan of camels, a tower of giraffes, and a leap of leopards. Originally it was used of animals but then generalised to people, as in the phrase the common herd. The word herd goes back to Old English and Old Germanic where it meant ‘a gathering’. Some of these names are very old and obviously had a use in a hunting or agricultural context. A swarm of bees, though composed of many individuals, has a unity of its own that can be given a name. The following are a comprehensive live list of animal collective nouns, for your reference and ease of perusal.A collective noun is a name for a group of people or animals that we see as a unit. 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 collection of a particular animal species is given a special term which is their group name for example an army of ants, a swarm of bees etc. 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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