collective nouns

Collective nouns have a fascination for us. The collective noun is the name we give a group of things or animals or people.  There is one fish, but a school of fish for the many. One starling but a flock of starlings.  Ever since the first collection, The Book of St Albans, was put together by a prioress, Juliana Berners, in 1486, we have been attempting appropriate and, we hope, catchy additions.  Juliana’s book had an alternative title, The Book of Hawking, Hunting and Blazing of Arms and was a bestseller in its day. As the second title reveals, the focus of the book was on hunting and coats of arms, and the glossary of collective names for ‘beestings and fowles’ was a thoughtful addition, including as it did quite a lot of collectives for birds and animals that a hunter should know.  It is thought that Juliana was from an aristocratic family and was herself extremely fond of hunting.

Juliana went beyond the preoccupations of hunting to invent some collectives in a humorous vein, thus setting in motion a favourite game for language lovers for centuries to come. Who else but a prioress could have come up with a superfluity of nuns? Other whimsicalities were a barren of mules, a skulk of foxes, a state of princes.

Jump to the modern day and we find entertaining creations such as a crash of rhinoceroses, a concern of social workers, a consternation of mothers.  And a reader of this blog has noticed a quarrel of journalists.  (We already had a quarrel of sparrows so this is a modern application of the old phrase).  But it is very apt and I hope it becomes widely used.

That is the problem with most of these collectives.  Are they really used? In Juliana’s day did she really talk about a parliament of owls and a murder of crows or were these collectives as fanciful then as they are today?  The pride of lions appears in the Oxford English Dictionary with its first citation in 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, such as the exaltation of larks, the unkindness of ravens, and the chattering of choughs, seem to be part of a shared and rather literary word play.

A bit of alliteration can help in the choice of word for the collective noun. The choughs chatter. But otherwise collectives seem to incline towards capturing some characteristic feature. The lions look noble. The owls have wise discussions. The crows are associated with death.  The journalists argue with the person giving the press conference, and scrap with each other over who gets the call to ask a question.

I do hope the quarrel of journalists becomes the accepted phrase.

And here’s a challenge: what is the collective name for all collective nouns?

P.S. A reader has added a jealousy of architects. It was a phrase picked up at a conference for architects who, fortunately, all laughed.