Collective Nouns

Collective nouns, like Phobias, are (deservedly, IMHO) a contentious subject in quizzes.

I am convinced that most of them (apart from the obvious ones such as a flock of sheep or a pack of wolves) were made up, at some point in history, as a joke. Many of them seem to date to a very early printed book, entitled The Book of St. Albans, and these were almost certainly not meant to be taken seriously. But they have been reproduced many times over the centuries, so you could argue that they have some credence. The trouble is, if you see a collective noun on the Internet (or if it comes up in a quiz) it can be very difficult to tell whether it comes from a genuinely historic list or whether it was made up yesterday. And if it was made up yesterday, it's obviously very unfair to ask about it in a quiz!

The UK TV sketch show Not the Nine O'Clock News famously made up the term "flange" for a group of baboons, as a joke; the Internet is now full of references to this, of the style "and now it's a scientifically correct term!" In reality there is very little evidence that this is the case, although there are stories that it has appeared in academic papers. To which I say: even a scientist can have a sense of humour.

Anyway ... collective nouns do keep coming up in quizzes, so here's a list of some that do – and/or that seem to me to have some validity. It doesn't include the obvious ones of the sort referred to above (flock of sheep, pack of wolves, etc.).

(For an interesting article on the issues discussed here – including more detail on The Book of St. Albans – see Precision of Lexicographers on the excellent World Wide Words website.)

Bears		Sloth
Crows		Murder
Dolphins or porpoises		Pod
Ferrets		Business
Geese in flight		Skein
Geese on the ground		Gaggle
Kangaroos		Mob
Larks		Exaltation
Leopards		Leap
Lions		Pride
Monkeys		Troop
Owls		Parliament
Partridges		Covey
Rhinoceroses		Crash
Starlings		Murmuration
Toads		Knot
Whales		School

For the following I've heard two possible answers:

Hedgehogs		Array		Prickle
Peacocks		Muster		Ostentation
Ravens		Unkindness		Conspiracy

© Haydn Thompson 2017–23