Anyone who knows me, knows I have a thing for words. A post about crows over at our friends the Story People got me wondering (again) why we refer to a group of crows as a murder.
Grammarphobia.com cites the OED for an explanation of why it's called a murder.
But when it comes to collective nouns for animals, Murders of Crows and Pods of Whales are just the beginning. How about:
- a Shrewdness of Apes
- a Piteousness of Doves
- a Fesnying of Ferrets
- an Implausibility of Gnus (Really? An implausibility? I find that implausible.)
And then there is the delightful Charm of Hummingbirds.
In fact, there are enough collective animal nouns to fill an ark! But don’t take my word for it.
2 comments:
I rarely laugh at a post so much that tears come the eyes, but ... well, here I sit. Still chuckling. Charm of Hummingbirds got me back to being all sappy, though. That was good of you to include it. :)
Did you see the PBS program the other night about those clever monkeys?
Glad you liked it. Good of the "Fun With Words" folks to do all that research. All day at work I found myself in meetings wondering if some of the groups in the meeting were an "implausability of gnus" or more of a "barren of mules."
I did catch part of the Nature piece. Sure bore out the appropriateness of a "shrewdness of apes."
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