Here are some other flights of fancy from The Book of Saint Albans: Larks get two terms of venery in Berners' book: exalting and exaltation. The Book of Saint Albans contains a list of many terms of venery at the end of the treatise on hunting, and while many of them are so familiar as to be unremarkable-a gaggle of geese, a pride of lions-some are rather fanciful. Berners was likely brought up at court and evidently retained a taste for hawking and hunting after she took orders. It was the first book in England to be printed in more than two colors (six were used in the heraldry section), and authorship of the sections on hunting and hawking have been attributed to Dame Juliana Barnes (more often called Berners), the prioress of an abbey near St. The Book of Saint Albans, originally printed in 1486, was a collection of advice and information on hawking, hunting, and heraldry. But this particular collective noun goes back to the 15th century, and comes from one of the most famous books on collective nouns in print. Authors then posited that the crowd of crows was called a murder because of the tremendous noise they make.įans of collective nouns are familiar with an exaltation of larks, which was the title of a book by James Lipton on collective nouns. Murder of crows was one of them-but it was rediscovered in the early 20th century. Though there was a rage for terms of venery, most of them fell out of use in the 16th century. Etymologists suggest that the association of crows and ravens with death might have led to the name, but the writer of the manuscript where a murder of crows first appeared gives no hint. Crows have been grouped in murders since the late 1400s-though no reason for the name was given. Treatises on hunting and hawking were very popular, and whenever the subject appeared in the 15th century, so too did lists of venery terms. There was, at that time, something of a fad for "terms of venery," or names for groups of game animals. This use of murder goes back to the 1400s. Unlike many collective nouns, this sense of murder even has enough evidence in print to merit entry into our dictionaries. One of our best-known (and easily meme-able) collective nouns is a murder of crows. And this may be why we love the more fanciful collective nouns so much. In the end, there is no cut-and-dried rule for how to refer to a particular group of creatures. Dogs come in packs elephants in herds people in a variety of conglomerations. But not all social animals come in colonies. But that's not to say that swarm isn't applied to other creatures: a swarm of eels was once common enough to merit mention in our Unabridged Dictionary.Ĭolony tends to be used of specific populations of animals that are settled in a place-a colony of rabbits or bees, for instance. When applied to other creatures, swarm tends to be used of other insects, and particularly ones that fly-locusts, fireflies, cockroaches. Its earliest uses were for great assemblies of bees on the wing, and indeed swarm of bees is still common. Perhaps swarm is an easier collective noun to get one's hands on. Herd, a word most people associate with deer, horses, or cattle, has been used of porpoises, seals, and birds, and flock, a word we now associate with sheep and birds, has been used of elephants, lions, camels, and pigs. Historically, a herd was any group of animals traveling or eating together, as was a flock, and this jumble continued on into the modern era. But herd and flock are also used of game animals in set phrases-a herd of deer a flock of geese. In this particular use, herd tends to be used of cattle or other bovine animals, and flock tends to be used of sheep and goats. Both herd and flock are used of animals (and usually farm animals) that are domesticated and kept under the care of a person. Fish also come in shoals, which comes from an Old English word that means "multitudes." If it's a group of one type of aquatic mammal-whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals-then they tend to gather in pods.īut once we get out of the sea, the rules for what to generically call groups of creatures get more complicated. No, not that school: this particular word comes from a Middle Dutch word that refers to a group of animals together. The fish-true fish, at any rate-are the easiest to classify. But what distinguishes a herd from a flock, or a swarm from a colony? And what do you call a group of fish? Ask someone about collective nouns and they're liable to holler "a murder of crows!" or "an exaltation of larks!" While the dramatic collective nouns are the ones that get the most attention, we use a number of collective terms every day.
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