A people of persons?

[barnabas_truman]

Here are some amusing collective nouns I have discovered.

a drove of donkeys

a fluther of jellyfish
...alternatively: a flutter of jellyfish, a smack of jellyfish, or a smuck (past tense?) of jellyfish.

a clutter/cluster of spiders

a conspiracy/unkindness/murder of ravens (nasty buggers aren't they?)

a parliament/clamour of rooks

a horde/muster/storytelling of crows (my elderly neighbor also used to call them a "caucus of crows," which I like better)

a siege of herons (nice!)

a phalanx of storks

a wake of vultures

a tiding of magpies (perhaps a reference to folk augury, the magpie counting rhymes?)

a company/pandemonium of parrots

a lepe of leopards (strange that such a word should even exist; aren't leopards solitary in the wild?)


Got any others you'd like to share?

Comments

[barnabas-truman.livejournal.com]

I've heard "a dunce of dodos," but it was only in one source and he admitted he had just made it up. I prefer "an extinction of dodos" myself.

[fools-and-irish.livejournal.com]

Given recent acts of Congress, I thought it was appropriate.