I've always been fascinated by the terms for groups of animals or birds.
Some of these must have been kindled by the sun-drenched ennui of idle poets on a Summer’s day. I can just see a velvet-jacketed Shelley or Burns, elbow-propped in a pollened meadow, scribbling down lofty and more improbable nouns as the day wore on, chortling at their own wit. Well, maybe not Shelley---he was never much of a chortler, I’d think, and most likely reached his apogee rhyming “wert” with “heart.”
Or maybe the Hellfire Club, sitting around drunk on a havoc-less off-night, when the Dogs of War had slipped clean out the pet door to howl, leaving them bored and peevish as petulant children, shouting out odd, disjointed words.
I declare, some of these are downright unfathomable, and others, the absolute personification of the raucous, the avaricious, the greedy, the charming, and the stunningly beautiful:
A Shrewdness of Apes
A Sleuth of Bears
An Obstinacy of Buffalo
A Bellowing of Bullfinches
A Wake of Buzzards
A Pounce of Cats
A Bask of Crocodiles
A Murder of Crows
A Cast of Falcons
A Charm of Finches
A Flamboyance of Flamingoes
A Skulk of Foxes
A Skein of Geese in flight sounds ever-so-much more graceful than a Gaggle on the ground, don’t you think?
A Tower of Giraffes
An Implausibility of Gnus
A Glint of Goldfish
A Leash of Greyhounds
A Muddle of Guinea Pigs
A Kettle of Hawks
An Array of Hedgehogs
A Bloat of Hippopotamuses
A Charm of Hummingbirds
A Cackle of Hyenas
A Scold of Jays
A Cling of Koalas
An Exaltation of Larks
A Leap of Leopards
A Loveliness of Ladybugs
A Lounge of Lizards
A Tidings of Magpies
A Bamboo of Pandas
A Pandemonium of Parrots
An Ostentation or Pride of Peacocks
A Pomp of Pekinese
A Gulp of Pelicans
A Creche of Penguins
A Bouquet of Pheasants
A Puddle of Platypus
A Prickle of Porcupines
A Gaze of Raccoons
An Unkindness of Ravens, (or a Storytelling, but I hear their vocabularies are quite limited).
A Stubbornness of Rhinoceroses
A Parliament of Rooks
A Harem of Seals
An Exultation of Skylarks
A Murmuration of Starlings
An Ambush of Tigers
A Pitying of Turtledoves
A Blessing of Unicorns
And my absolute favorite, charming and true in its imagery:
A KALEIDOSCOPE of Butterflies:.
Try as I may, I cannot seem to establish an account on here so I can comment under my naname.
ReplyDeleteExtraordinary article, my friend! I am in awe!
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