We’ve talked before about collective nouns. Recently I got thinking about the vast variety of verbiage assigned to collections of animals and insects.
We know that there are herds of cattle, elephants, caribou, antelope (or is it antelopes?) and zebras. We know that are prides of lions.
Did you that a group of rhinos is a crash? How about a troop of baboons, a sleuth of bears or a pod of walruses?
I didn’t know it at the time, but I’ve seen grists of bees and, appropriately, intrusions of cockroaches.
My son sees rafters of turkeys and bales of turtles on the roads where he lives.
I hope that I shall never encounter an ambush of tigers. But while we’re talking felines: What got me thinking about these words was a recent episode of one of my favorite TV shows, The Big Bang Theory. In fact, this whole blog post was a pretext for sharing a clip from this video, the first 50 seconds of which focus on the collective nouns pertaining to large numbers of my favorite domestic creature.
Because I currently have most of my faculties, I have only two, Lucy and Ricky. Who knows, one day I might assemble a full cast: Fred, Ethel, Little Ricky, Carolyn Applebee and Mrs. Trumbull.
Word Nymph 