What is a group of geese called? Geese gather on a grassy field. In the process many die in stampedes, which typically feature 500 wildebeest travelling at speeds of up to 50mph and which can last for 30 minutes: chaos ensues when they dash through treacherous waters, as they fall prey to predators. The term ‘a confusion of wildebeest’ is so-called from the noise and disorientation of these animals when they gather for their giant migration, when around two million of them unite to search for greener areas. What is a group of wildebeest called? Wildebeest follow the seasonal rains. Their other collective nouns include ‘mob’, ‘parcel’ and ‘horde’. They descended onto battlefields to pick at the fallen and, with their alleged prophetic powers, they appeared on roofs to portend that someone inside would soon die. The term ‘a murder of crows’ probably derives from 15th-century peasants’ fears that these sinister-looking birds, with dark feathers and jet-black eyes, were witches in disguise or messengers of the Devil. Collective nouns for different groups of animals: What is a group of crows called? Crows gather in a public park. There are various animal collective nouns that you're probably already familiar with such as ‘a flock of sheep’ or ‘swarm of bees’, but there are also an astonishing number of intriguing animal collective nouns that you may not have heard of before. What is a collective noun?Ī collective noun is a countable noun that refers to a group of people or things. ![]() A bit of alliteration helps as well.You may have heard of ‘a school of fish’, ‘a pride of lions’ or ‘a pack of wolves’, but have you ever come across ‘a shrewdness of apes’ or ‘a confusion of wildebeest’? In this article, author and investigator of languages and interesting words Adam Jacot de Boinod takes a look at some of the more unfamiliar animal collective nouns. 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 word flock is similarly old but worked the other way around. 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. ![]() A collective noun is a name for a group of people or animals that we see as a unit.
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