Collective Nouns

I tell you, I am so glad I'm alive in the age of Google! I love learning odd bits and pieces of information, things that might serve me well in word games but probably nowhere else...unless to make idle elevator conversation.


A few posts ago, I pondered what would be the collective noun for safety cones and went googling to try to find it. Well, lo! and behold! I found a collective noun for traffic/safety cones...can you believe it?!


Here's what I found on Wikipedia when I googled "collective nouns":

A confusion of [traffic] cones -suggested by Margaret Webb, j&m@arachnid.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.ojohaven.com/collectives


Except, in Cone's case, I think a 'misplacement of cones' might be better.

Here are some other collective names for things that I found amusing/interesting/confounding:

• a bask of crocodiles


• an ostentation of peacocks


• a sleuth of bears


• a quiver of cobras


• a rumba of rattlesnakes (Shake those maracas!)


• a train of coyotes


• a pipe of eels


• a romp of otters


• a pandemonium of parrots


• a bob of sea lions (presumably while in water?)


• a lump of toads


• a squirm of worms


• a shiver of sharks (understand that one completely!)


• an odor of skunks


• an overabundance of elephants


• a crash of rhinoceroses (rhinoceri?)

My favorite is "a rabble of butterflies." This definition is from en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rabble: A mob; collectively, commoners; a disorderly group.

So, as they're gathering at some puddle in the rain forest, a collection of Monarchs jostles the other insects out of the way, bellying up to the bar, as it were, obstreperous, rude and mischief-making:

"Hey, Davey, how's your Mom, eh? Still dating that glow-worm, is she?"

Davey throws a wing-slap in the offender's direction.

"Not like your Mom! At least mine knows who fathered her kids! Your sister looks like a maggot!"

With that, the brawl begins. The resultant chaotic flapping of thousands of butterfly wings starts a cascade of weather-altering effects. The eastern seaboard of the United States is hit with unheard of winter hurricanes and nor'easters that start the first day of deer season in Pennsylvania, lasting into April the following year.

That wouldn't have happened had the collective noun for butterflies been something less rabble-rousing, like "a consultation of butterflies," for instance.

[The rowdy rabble photo above (c) Michael Patrick. Found at media.knoxnews.com,
Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel.]