: D D TE E N H IZ IO IG R T R HO BU PY T I O U TR C T A IS O D N R FO
Aardvarks
: D D TE E N H IZ IO IG R T R HO BU PY T I O U TR C T A IS O D N R FO
Aircraft
A Cast of Actors
An Armory of Aardvarks
cast: ˈkast
armory: (ˈärm-rē) n.
1. a storehouse for weapons 2. a collection of valuable resources 3. a building housing the drill hall and offices of the United States National Guard 4. a grouping of two or more aardvarks
A Company of Actors company: ˈkəmp-nē
A Condescension of Actors This term, describing a pompous actor’s chief characteristic, is attributed to a colleague of the famed linguist Eric Partridge, best known for his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, originally published in 1937—one of the first works to look at the popular vernacular of the English language in a serious manner. Another one of Partridge’s books has a title that is itself a collective: A Charm of Words. A Cry of Actors cry: ˈkrī
A Faculty of Academics faculty: ˈfa-kəl-tē
A Queue of Actors queue: ˈkyü
A Balance of Accountants balance: (ˈba-lən(t)s) n.
An Entrance of Actresses entrance: (ˈen-trəns) n.
1. an instrument for weighing 2. a means of judging or deciding 3. an act of creating physical equilibrium 4. a group of two or more accountants
1. the power or permission to enter 2. the act of entering 3. a place of entry 4. the point at which a voice or instrument part begins in a musical score 5. the first appearance of an actor in a scene 6. a group of two or more actresses
A Troupe of Acrobats troupe: (ˈtrüp) n.
1. a company of performing artists 2. a quantity of similar people or things 3. a group of two or more acrobats
A Sun of Adders sun: ˈsən
A Bridge of Admirals bridge: (ˈbrij) n.
1. a structure carrying a pathway across two sides of a river or valley 2. something resembling a bridge in form or function 3. the forward part of a seagoing ship 4. a group of two or more admirals A Flight of Aircraft flight: ˈflīt
A Wing of Aircraft wing: ˈwiŋ
12
Compendium_Book_v4a.indd 12-13
13
12/19/12 12:34 PM
Anatomists
A Rookery of Albatrosses Written in 1838, Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic adventure tale The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was Poe’s longest fictional work. It follows the adventures of a young Nantucket islander who meets with shipwreck, cannibals, and a variety of other increasingly outlandish misfortunes. While in the southern Indian Ocean, Pym witnesses the nesting habits of the albatross: “The albatross is one of the largest and fiercest of the South Sea birds. Between this bird and the penguin the most singular friendship exists. Their nests are constructed with great uniformity upon a plan concerted between the two species—that of the albatross being placed in the centre of a little square formed by the nests of four penguins. Navigators have agreed in calling an assemblage of such encampments a rookery.”
Angelfish
Apes
A Company of Angelfish
A Cluster of Antelopes
company: ˈkəmp-nē
cluster: (ˈkləs-tər) n.
1. a number of events or things that occur together 2. an aggregation of stars or galaxies 3. a grouping of two or more antelopes
A Choir of Angels choir: kwī(-ə)r
A Chorus of Angels chorus: (ˈkȯr-əs) n.
A Herd of Antelopes herd: ˈhərd
1. an organized collection of singers 2. in Greek drama, a company of singers or dancers in a play 3. a grouping of two or more angels
A Tribe of Antelopes tribe: (ˈtrīb) n.
1. a social group of families and clans 2. a political division of the Roman people in Ancient Rome 3. a group of persons with related interests 4. a grouping of two or more antelopes
A Flight of Angels flight: ˈflīt
A Host of Angels In biblical stories, the Heavenly Host is God’s army of angels. In the book of Joshua, as he approaches the city of Jericho, Joshua encounters a man with a sword drawn standing above him. Joshua asks him, “Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?” The man, an angel, replies, “Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.” In Paradise Lost, Milton writes of Satan being cast from heaven with “all his host of Rebel Angels.”
A Weight of Albatrosses weight: (ˈwāt) n.
1. the measurement or amount that something weighs 2. the accepted standard that a thing should weigh 3. one of the subdivisions of various sports, as in boxing 4. a heavy object lifted for athletic exercise 5. a grouping of two or more albatrosses
A Cache of Ammunition cache: (ˈkash) n.
1. a storage place, often hidden, for various implements 2. a short-term storage area for frequentlyused computer data 3. any grouping of hidden ammunition for use by a particular force or person
A Bench of Alderman bench: ˈbench
A Congregation of Alligators
congregation: (ˌkäŋ-gri-ˈgā-shən)
An Ooze of Amoebas
A Hive of Allergists
ooze: (ˈüz) n.
hive: ˈhīv
1. a soft deposit of mud or slime 2. the act of moving slowly, or oozing 3. a grouping of two or more amoebas
A Mayflower of Americans mayflower: (ˈmā-ˌflau̇(-ə)r) n.
1. any of a variety of spring-blooming plants 2. a three-masted ship carrying English and Dutch religious separatists to the coast of New England in 1620 3. a group of two or more citizens of the United States of America
A Corpse of Anatomists corpse: (ˈkȯrps)
1. a dead body, especially of a human being 2. the remains of something discarded 3. a group of two or more anatomists
An Army of Ants That ants should possess a collective noun is fitting, since they are one of the most biologically successful animals that live and forage collectively. The thirty-two subspecies of army ants (called thusly for their aggressive behavior and their collective “raiding” expeditions) will also die collectively. If, while on a raiding party, a column of army ants gets separated from the main body of foraging ants, the ants will form a circular mill and walk around it until they die of exhaustion. An account from Guyana in 1921 describes a mill twelve hundred feet wide, with ants taking two and a half hours to walk the circumference of the mill. That’s military intelligence for you.
A Catch of Anglers Within The Book of Saint Albans there is an essay on the art of fishing, called the “Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle.” To fish with an angle means to fish with a rod, a line, and a baited hook. The term angle itself derives from the Old English angul, or fishhook. A millennia before The Book of Saint Albans was written, there was a Germanic tribe called the Angles, so named for the fishhook-shaped peninsula of their home in what is now the border between Denmark and Germany. In the fifth century, the Angles, along with the Saxons, invaded Britain, bringing with them their culture and their language. It’s a short linguistic hop from Angles to English.
A Colony of Ants colony: ˈkä-lə-nē
A Swarm of Ants swarm: ˈswȯrm
A Shrewdness of Apes Until the seventeenth century, shrewd, derived from the pejorative shrew, tended to connote something evil by nature. Gradually, a more favorable slant of shrewd developed, but there remains a little something sinister about it—to be shrewd is to be cunning, to be planning something. Our latent worry about the shrewdness of apes seems to be a cultural constant; along with Pierre Boulle’s La planète des singes, consider Aldous Huxley’s
A Mob of Animals mob: ˈmäb
I changed “Unites” to “United” here. —dvn
14
Compendium_Book_v4a.indd 14-15
: D D TE E N H IZ IO IG R T R HO BU PY T I O U TR C T A IS O D N R FO
Albatrosses
15
12/19/12 12:34 PM
Asses
bleak 1948 novel Ape and Essence. Huxley’s book charts out a dystopian, post–World War III future and contains a series of surreal vignettes that feature apes and baboons ruling the world, including two ape armies, each with their own Albert Einstein held captive on a leash.
wrought by hammering.” Its association with weaponry began in the 1550s as it evolved in meaning from an act of “battering” the enemy to that of the objects that do the battering. In 1754, Benjamin Franklin first used battery to describe an electric cell, possibly referencing the act of discharging electricity from one point to another, similar to shooting a gun.
A Troop of Apes troop: ˈtrüp
: D D TE E N H IZ IO IG R T R HO BU PY T I O U TR C T A IS O D N R FO
Apes
A Troop of Artillery
A Bushel of Apples
troop: ˈtrüp
1. a unit of dry measurement 2. a container holding a bushel 3. a large quantity 4. a grouping of two or more apples
A Troupe of Artistes
A Company of Archer Fish
1. a group of things fastened together, as of sticks 2. a large number 3. a sizable amount of money 4. a person embodying a specific characteristic (bundle of joy) 5. a grouping of two or more stalks of asparagus
bushel: (ˈbu̇-shəl) n.
troupe: ˈtrüp
A Bundle of Asparagus bundle: (ˈbən-dəl) n.
company: ˈkəmp-nē
A Quiver of Arrows Although there seems to be no direct etymological link between the verb quiver (“to tremble,” derived from the Old English cwifer) and the quiver that is the container for an archer’s arrows (derived from the Germanic Köcher), it is interesting to consider how often in literary description an arrow tends to “quiver” after it reaches its target. Consider this passage from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: “And just then, through the high, stained-glass window of the hall, a black arrow crashed, and struck, and stuck quivering, in the midst of the long table.”
A Coffle of Asses coffle: (ˈkȯ-fəl) n.
1. a train of slaves or animals, as of donkeys or asses, fastened together A Drove of Asses drove: ˈdrōv
A Herd of Asses herd: ˈhərd
A Sheaf of Arrows sheaf: (ˈshēf) n.
A Pace of Asses The greatness of collective terms is that even when they’ve been mistranscribed and misunderstood, they still carry a poetically true quality. We may read “a pace of asses” and think of the steady pace of a dutiful train of donkeys, but we would be wrong. “Pace” was originally recorded as the Old English passe, which is defined as an animal’s “passages; the places which he hath gone through or by.” Passe is synonymous with the Old English rack or rayke, from which we get the word track. Therefore, “a passe of asses” was intended to reference their track, as in
1. a quantity of cut stalks of grain 2. a collection of things gathered together 3. a quiver full of arrows A Conflagration of Arsonists
conflagration: (ˌkän-flə-ˈgrā-shən) n.
1. a large or destructive fire 2. a war or armed conflict 3. a group of two or more arsonists A Battery of Artillery Battery derives from the French baterie, to strike, and originally meant “metal objects
16
Compendium_Book_v4a.indd 16-17
12/19/12 12:34 PM
Avocets
a mule track. When transcribing The Book of Saint Albans, passe lost an s and eventually became pace.
A Knot of Astrologers This term is also used for witches, so it fits well for a band of astrologers. That makes sense when you consider Elizabeth I’s court astrologer, John Dee. A divisive figure in his time and after it, he was often seen as the father of modern-age “devil worship.” An early-twentieth-century biographer of Dee defends him: “For Dee . . . was a true, sincere Christian, although undoubtedly he was imposed upon and deluded by the evil spirits he sometimes mistook for good ones.”
A Belt of Asteroids The great asteroid belt lies between Mars and Jupiter. It contains millions of asteroids (about seven hundred thousand or so are over a kilometer in diameter), the eccentric orbits of which caused all sorts of befuddlement to early astronomers who longed for a smooth and orderly procession of heavenly bodies across the night sky. The original conjecture was that the asteroids in question were the remnants of a planet that had been destroyed, but it is now theorized that the belt consists of the detritus of a “failed” planet that never formed. How it became known as a “belt” remains a mystery, but it’s been called such since at least the 1850s. In 1855’s A Guide to the Knowledge of the Heavens, Robert James Mann notes that “the orbits of the asteroids are placed in a wide belt of space, extending between 209 millions of miles and 300 millions of miles from the sun.”
: D D TE E N H IZ IO IG R T R HO BU PY T I O U TR C T A IS O D N R FO
Asteroids
A Team of Athletes team: (ˈtēm)
A Colony of Auks colony: ˈkä-lə-nē
A Flock of Auks flock: ˈfläk
A Raft of Auks raft: ˈraft
A Colony of Avocets colony: ˈkä-lə-nē
18
Compendium_Book_v4a.indd 18-19
12/19/12 12:34 PM
: D D TE E N H IZ IO IG R T R HO BU PY T I O U TR C T A IS O D N R FO
Baboons
Bananas
A Congress of Baboons
parlance, a sett refers not to a grouping of badgers but to their den, a badger sett. In the late eighteenth century, the verb badgerbaiting arose to describe the pastime of flushing badgers from their sett and then killing them with hunting dogs—which, alliteration aside, seems like it deserves a harsher descriptive word than baiting. Badger-baiting has been illegal in the UK since 1830.
congress: ˈkäŋ-grəs
A Flange of Baboons See A Whoop of Gorillas
A Clan of Badgers clan: (ˈklan) n.
1. in Scottish/Celtic vernacular, a group of households descended from a common ancestor 2. a group of people united by common interest 3. a grouping of two or more badgers A Colony of Badgers colony: ˈkä-lə-nē
An Aroma of Bakers aroma: (ə-ˈrō-mə) n.
1. a distinctive odor, usually appealing 2. the odor of wine 3. a particular quality or atmosphere 4. a grouping of two or more bakers
A Rumpus of Baboons rumpus: (ˈrəm-pəs) n.
A Tabernacle of Bakers The marriage of the word tabernacle to religious motifs goes back quite far in history, but it is not its only meaning. During the Exodus from Egypt, the Tabernacle (in Hebrew, mishkan, for “residence”) was a portable structure where the Ark of the Covenant was stored. The subtlety of the Hebrew mishkan, which implies a holy presence, has crossed over to the Latin-derived tabernacle, although its root meaning is still the fairly pedestrian “tent.” In medieval England, a royal ordinance forbade bakers from selling their breads in any place other than in open market stalls or tents—which leads us to this collective term—a sarcastic comment on the shabby tabernacle market stall of a baker with that of the biblical Tabernacle.
1. a noisy commotion 2. a grouping of two or more baboons A Troop of Baboons troop: ˈtrüp
A Culture of Bacteria culture: (ˈkəl-chər) n.
1. the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization, or society 2. to gain, by education, social mores, instincts, and knowledge 3. a growth of a bacterium in a controlled setting A Cete of Badgers Cete remains one of the great mysteries of the classic collective nouns from the Middle English era. What is a cete, exactly, and why should badgers be considered one? Lipton, in his Exaltation of Larks, believes it derives from the Latin for company. In contemporary
A Bunch of Bananas While a banana bunch in common parlance is the cluster of bananas one picks up at a market, those are actually called tiers, or hands.
21
Compendium_Book_v4a.indd 20-21
12/19/12 12:34 PM
Barristers
A Buzz of Barflies
On the tree, bananas grow in “bunches,” with a bunch composed of between three and twenty tiers. Individual banana fruits are called fingers.
buzz: (ˈbəz) n.
1. a persistent vibrating sound 2. a murmur 3. rumor, gossip, or busy activity 4. excited talk, especially of fads or trends 5. a group of two or more so-called barflies
An Immersion of Baptists immersion: (i-ˈmər-zhən) n.
1. the act of being plunged into water 2. a baptism, in which the entire body is dipped in water 3. (archaic) in astronomy, an eclipse 4. a group of two or more practicing Baptists
: D D TE E N H IZ IO IG R T R HO BU PY T I O U TR C T A IS O D N R FO
Baptists
A Crop of Barley crop: ˈkräp
A Promise of Barmen See A Promise of Tapsters for the background of this phrase.
A Shoal of Barbels shoal: ˈshōl
A Fixture of Barnacles
A Babble of Barbers
1. the act or process of attachment 2. something that is attached as a permanent appendage 3. a familiar presence 4. a grouping of two or more barnacles
fixture: (ˈfiks-chər) n.
babble: ˈba-bəl
A Crew of Barbers crew: ˈkrü
A Truth of Barons Quite often mistakenly recorded as a “thought of barons” (in the jump from the Old English Trought to the modern Truth, the r was sometime dropped and scholars replaced it with an h, rendering it a “though” of barons). Truth refers to the oath upon which barons were to swear allegiance to the King: “Ye shall swear that ye shall be faithful and true, and truth and faith bear unto the King our Sovereign Lord, and to his heirs, Kings of England; and truly ye shall do, and truly acknowledge the service due of the lands that which ye hold for him as in the right of your Church, as God shall help you, and all the holy sanctities.”
A Loquacity of Barbers As befitting the storied tradition of a gregarious barber, this entry begs the following anecdote, apocryphally attributed to British politician Enoch Powell. It seems that there was a barber near Parliament who was infamous for talking the ear off politicians with his views on the state of the world as he tended to their hair. One day, when the barber asked Powell how he’d like his hair cut, Powell responded, “In silence.”
A Battery of Barracuda battery: (ˈba-t(ə-)rē) n.
1. the act of beating or use of force 2. a grouping of artillery shells 3. the guns of a warship 4. an electronic cell 5. a grouping of two or more barracuda A Boast of Barristers boast: ˈbōst
22
Compendium_Book_v4a.indd 22-23
12/19/12 12:34 PM
Bears
A Cloud of Bats
A Wiggery of Barristers
cloud: ˈklau̇d
wiggery: (ˈwi-gə-rē) n.
1. (rare, archaic) wigs, collectively 2. the practice of wearing a wig 3. a group of two or more barristers
1. a shallow 2. a sandbank that creates a shallow stretch of water 3. a grouping of two or more bass
A Colony of Bats Should we be feeling poetic, we might choose to say a cauldron or a hanger of bats, but there is something about bats as a group that begs the use of colony, which is what biologists call bats collectively. Not all bats live in colonies; some species are solitary, but those that do so, often colonize on a large scale. The Bracken Cave in Texas houses an estimated twenty million Mexican free-tailed bats, making it the largest known collection of mammals in the world.
A Cauldron of Bats
A Hanger of Bats
A Fleet of Bass fleet: ˈflēt
A Shoal of Bass shoal: (ˈshōl) n.
hanger: ˈhaŋ-ər
cauldron: (ˈkȯl-drən) n.
1. a large kettle, usually of iron 2. something that resembles a boiling cauldron in its intensity 3. a grouping of two or more bats
A Grove of Bayonets A metaphoric term that seemed to rise and fall hand-in-hand with the ascendancy and eventual obsolescence of the bayonet, a long knife attached to the end of rifles. We see references to “a grove of bayonets” throughout the nineteenth century. In an account of the Irish Rebellion of 1803, the streets of Lisburn are described as “a grove of bayonets.” The term seems to have vanished from contemporary use by the second decade of the twentieth century.
Compendium_Book_v4a.indd 24-25
Bees
A Colony of Beavers
A Pack of Bears
colony: ˈkä-lə-nē
pack: (ˈpak) n.
1. a bundle of something 2. a grouping of related objects 3. a set of playing cards 4. a knapsack or article used for easy conveyance of loads 5. a grouping of two or more bears
A Family of Beavers family: ˈfam-lē
A Lodge of Beavers Lodge has always been a word with militaristic overtones. Derived from the Old French loge, or “hut,” its early verb usage was often employed to denote the housing of soldiers in tents, e.g., a general would lodge his soldiers north of the battlefield. One voice of dissent in the naming of the beaver lodge is the seventeenth-century French explorer Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz, who wished them to be called “villages”: “it is thus I call their place of abode, after the Canadians and the Indians, with whom I agree.”
A Sleuth of Bears A misleading derivative of the Middle Eng lish sloweth of bears. See A Sloth of Bears. A Sloth of Bears We can assume that no man or woman who has ever had the misfortune of being chased by a bear would call them slothful, but to the mind of a gentleman hunter of the fifteenth century, slowness was an evident characteristic of the bears of old Europe. Hunting manuals from the era speak of a “slowth of beares.” Some documents translate slowth into a sleuth of bears, which makes little sense except to maybe envision a bear nosing for honey.
A Keg of Beer keg: ˈkeg
A Bike of Bees See A Bike of Wasps for a more relevant usage of bike as a collective term.
A Nobility of Beasts
nobility: (nō-ˈbi-lə-tē) n.
A Charm of Bees charm: (ˈchärm)
1. the quality or state of being noble 2. high station or rank in society 3. the class of people of noble rank or having hereditary titles 4. a grouping of two or more beasts
A Hill of Beans Jack the Giant Killer learned that even a single bean was hardly worthless, and an excited, irascible person can be told that they are “full of beans,” but we are still left to ponder the expression “it don’t amount to a hill of beans,” meaning worthless, born in the rural American colloquialism of the late nineteenth century. The whole phrase, however, may have existed long before its humorous usage. A farming manual from 1858 refers to the tiny handmade mounds of soil with planted lima beans as “hills of beans.”
A Bevy of Beauties This collective term tends to show up whenever we wish to qualify something as pretty, be they ladies, swans, doves, or quail. There is much discussion around the mysterious origins of bevy, with some believing it is derived from the French bevee, “to drink.” If this is true, it would have been first used collectively for birds gathering around a fountain, and then migrated its way to the beauties in question.
A Maul of Bears
A Harmony of Beauties
maul: ˈmȯl
24
Bears
: D D TE E N H IZ IO IG R T R HO BU PY T I O U TR C T A IS O D N R FO
Barristers
1. a trait that fascinates or allures 2. a chanting or reciting of a magic spell 3. something worn about a person to ward off evil 4. in physics, a fundamental quark, or small component of matter 5. a grouping of two or more bees For more on charm as a collective, see A Charm of Finches. A Drift of Bees See A Drift of Hogs/A Drive of Hogs for a more relevant usage of drift as a collective term. A Game of Bees game: ˈgām
harmony: (ˈhär-mə-nē) n.
A Grist of Bees Grain that is ready to be ground up is called grist, after the word’s meaning of “gnashing one’s teeth.” How then did this word ever gain an association with bees? James Fenimore
1. a melody 2. the combination of notes in a chord 3. a pleasing arrangement or construction 4. a group of two or more beauties
25
12/19/12 12:34 PM
Bells
Cooper recorded the first (and most likely only) use of the term as a collective for bees in his 1848 novel The Oak Openings. As bees swarm around their lately destroyed hive, Gershom Waring, a hard-drinking trapper, exclaims that there’s “an onaccountable grist on ’em.” The tale’s narrator translates Gershom’s lingo for us: “Gershom was never very particular in his figures of speech, usually terming anything in quantities a ‘grist;’ and meaning in the present instance by ‘onaccountable,’ a number not to be counted.”
were so large that the word became a way to humorously remark upon someone’s abnormally large head while also taking a jab at their intelligence (the way a modern speaker might say “melon-headed”). A costermonger was someone who sold fruit or other food items from a stand—a fly-by-night, catch-ascatch-can profession in the best of times. All this leads to the pejorative grouping a coster of beggars.
: D D TE E N H IZ IO IG R T R HO BU PY T I O U TR C T A IS O D N R FO
Bees
A Fighting of Beggars Another company term for beggars from the fifteenth century. Hodgkin informs us “probably this word is not ‘fighting,’ but fyton, or lesynge.” This does not help us any until we uncover these words as being synonymous with “lying.”
A Hive of Bees hive: (ˈhīv) n.
1. a nest of bees or other insects 2. a man-made container for bees 3. a place of intense activity A Hum of Bees This whimsical term shares a kinship with the old company terms collected in the books of venery in that it references the unique song of the bee (as does a chattering of choughs or a charm of finches). Thoreau writes, “At this comparatively still season, before the crickets begin, the hum of bees is a very noticeable sound, and the least hum or buzz that fills the void is detected.”
A Parliament of Beggars
parliament: (ˈpär-lə-mənt) n.
1. a formal gathering for a discussion of public affairs 2. the legislative body of the United Kingdom and other nations 3. a group of two or more beggars A Clarion of Bells
clarion: (ˈkler-ē-ən) n.
1. a medieval trumpet 2. the sound of a clarion or a sound resembling a clarion 3. a grouping of two or more bells
A Rabble of Bees rabble: ˈra-bəl
A Stand of Bees stand: ˈstand
A Peal of Bells
A Swarm of Bees Recorded as “swarme” in the 1480s, this remains one of the most well-known and oftused collective terms. Below, an updated poem from the Middle Ages speaks of the use of bees to agriculture:
1. the loud ringing of bells 2. a complete set of changes on a given number of bells 3. a set of bells tuned to tones of the major scale
peal: (ˈpēl) n.
A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay; A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon; A swarm of bees in July isn’t worth a fly. A Coster of Beggars The English rural tradition has long been famous for the multitude and sumptuousness of its apple varieties. One such apple is a costard—a large ribbed apple. Costards
26
Compendium_Book_v4a.indd 26-27
12/19/12 12:34 PM
Birds
A Peloton of Bicyclists Although its use has broadened so that it may refer to professional bicyclists in general, a peloton is by definition the large group of clustered riders in a professional bicycle road race. The term comes from the French which means “platoon” or “rolled up in a ball,” (as in the expression Se mettre en peloton). Riders use the aerodynamic effects of the peloton in a variety of strategic ways—positioning oneself in the middle of the peloton reduces the amount of energy required to maintain speed by as much as 30 percent; but, should the front riders decide to break away from the peloton, the riders behind them will be hit with a wave of wind resistance and be forced to expend increasing amounts of effort to catch up. Mathematicians have a field day with this kind of thing, writing academic papers that contain sentences like this: “When supply-side physiological factors are incorporated, the maximum sustainable speed and maximum lead time can be calculated.”
Birds
A Wad of Bills 1. a small mass or collection 2. a soft mass or plug of a material 3. a mouthful of a chewing material 4. a considerable amount of money 5. a collection, usually pocket-sized, of paper money (bills)
A Congregation of Birds
congregation: (ˌkäŋ-gri-ˈgā-shən) n.
A Dissimulation of Birds This is one of the old “fanciful” company terms, as one scholar puts it. Referring to any congregation of small birds, the idea is that they cause a distraction to those hunting them by flying up into circles, sending their predators (hawks, most likely) on a chase that will lead them away from the nest. Edward Abbey, in his 1988 novel The Fool’s Progress writes “After making love, I feel serenity not sadness, hear bluebirds in an alpine meadow, dream mystical daydreams in the out of doors. But I was attacked by an unkindness of ravens. Not a dissimulation of birds or exaltation of larks but a gaggle of geese, a murder of crows, a school of hagfish.”
A Herd of Bison As we will see with elk, a smaller collection of bison are a gang, but a great number moving en masse is a herd. The reemergence of the American Bison herds (a distinct species from the European Bison) is one of the great success stories of the conservation movement. Although nowhere near the numbers of the vast herds of the early-nineteenth-century American Plains, wild bison now number close to fifteen thousand (with many hundreds of thousands more on ranches or in captivity).
drift: ˈdrift
A Psalter of Bishops Another whimsical term invented by grammarian Eric Partridge. The psalter is a religious volume containing the book of Psalms and other related works, so it is in the sense of that collection that we collect a group of bishops.
A Fleet of Birds
A Sea of Bishops
flock: ˈfläk
A Parcel of Birds parcel: (ˈpär-səl) n.
1. a fragment or portion 2. a tract or plot of land 3. a company or collection of things 4. a grouping of two or more birds
A Pretense of Bitterns
pretense: (prē-ˌten(t)s) n.
1. a claim not supported by known facts 2. an ostentation, and an implication of falsehood 3. a pretentious act or assertion 4. a grouping of two or more bitterns A Sedge of Bitterns This is a common mistranscription of the proper term of venery for the bittern (and its cousin, the heron), a siege of bitterns. But as we see time and again, there is a sort of poetic beauty to the mistake—the Middle English manuscripts often spelled siege as sege, which invariably led to sedge. However, a sedge is a kind of marsh grass, and bitterns wade in marshes. Lovely, however incorrect it is. The veneral terms always related to a characteristic of the animal that would be of interest to a hunter—hence a bittern laying siege to its prey in a marsh. (See A Siege of Herons.)
bench: ˈbench
fleet: ˈflēt
sea: ˈsē This term (“A Sea of Bishops”) was hidden behind the graphic, so I moved the graphic down. —dvn
A Cloud of Blackbirds cloud: ˈklau̇d
A Flock of Blackbirds flock: ˈfläk
A Pod of Birds pod: ˈpäd
A Stack of Bills stack: (ˈstak) n.
28
Compendium_Book_v4a.indd 28-29
A Rush of Birds
A Bench of Bishops
A Drift of Birds
wealth: ˈwelth
A Gang of Bison See A Gang of Buffalo.
A Volery of Birds Published in 1755, Samuel Johnson’s Diction ary of the English Language contained citations for 40,000 words and 114,000 literary quotations. Unlike modern dictionaries, Johnson’s book was an intensely personal project full of divisive opinion. Johnson proclaimed that he “wished to remove the rubbish from the paths of Learning and Genius,” and he was not above throwing the odd joke into his manuscript (his definition of boy: “a male child, not a girl”). Within its pages is a citation for “volery: a flight or flock of birds.” Modern lexicographers do not cite the word. There is, however, an archaic term for winning all the tricks in a card game, a vole. Such a turn in a game of chance implies a multitude of pleasant things, much like a flock of birds.
colony: (ˈkä-lə-nē) n.
A Wealth of Billionaires
A Roost of Birds
rush: ˈrəsh
A Colony of Birds
A Flock of Birds
Blackbirds
roost: ˈrüst
wad: (ˈwäd) n.
: D D TE E N H IZ IO IG R T R HO BU PY T I O U TR C T A IS O D N R FO
Bicyclists
29
12/19/12 12:34 PM