A mischief of mice, and other venereal game
English is an odd language, with more than its share of the superfluous, even the ridiculous. What better excuse to have fun with it?
Case in point: Collective nouns. More than one author has purloined the favorite “murder of crows” for a mystery title. (So if their attorney pleads it down, would that make them a manslaughter of crows?)
Better yet is the title James Lipton, that venerable man of words and humor, chose for his light treatise of collectives, “An Exaltation of Larks or, The Venereal Game.”
No dirty reference there. Venereal as in terms of venery, derived from Latin root ven, essentially the hunt. What has that to do with collectives? Game, of course. Critters.
A skein of geese. An unkindness of ravens. A business of ferrets and a bevy of beauties.
OK, so that last one is a different kind of hunting with a fun, if dubious and obscure, backstory. “Bevy” is an enduring English nickname for beverage. Poets through the centuries have been “drinking in” beauty, hence the bevy of beauties (young women).
While we guess the earliest “venereal” terms referred to animals exclusively, over time more such nouns of multitude were applied to people, too. Lipton categorized them into six groups:
Onomatopoeia (sounds-like): A murmuration of starlings, gaggle of geese, cry of hounds.
Characteristics: A leap of leopards, pride of lions, skulk of foxes. An eloquence of lawyers?
Appearance: Bouquet of pheasants, swarm of bees.
Habitat: A shoal of fish (more in a moment), nest of rabbits.
Commentary: A sentence of judges, an impatience of wives and a rage of maidens (noticing a little misogyny here), a riffraff of knaves.
Error: A school of fish.
Yes, fish got double entry. Today, we say a “school of fish,” but that’s ascribed to a transcription error repeated so often it stuck. Originally it was probably a shoal, from Old English “sceald,” meaning shallow. Shoal was used for specific fish groupings, presumably shallow water fish.
In government we have a state of princes, and more apt today, a boast of soldiers and a disagreement of statesmen. An odium (odious, as in ick) of politicians may paint too broad a brush. A slate of candidates — still in wide use — Lipton says probably derived from when they were listed on chalkboards instead of innumerable yard signs.
Some are just inexplicable in modern life: A slouch of models. I suppose back when one had to sit for a painting instead of a photograph, slouching was inevitable. Others are beyond obvious — a piddle of puppies.
Cats, with their ever-variable personalities, seem to have the longest list. A clowder, clutter, glaring, or pounce of cats. A kindle or a litter (kittens). And — no surprise here — a destruction of (wild) cats. Mee-ouch.
But let’s end with baboons who, like ants (army, swarm, colony) and hounds (cry, mute!, pack) have a trio of choices: A flange, tribe, or — drum roll, please — a congress.
You smiled.
Thanks to reader A. C. for the inspiration.
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Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Email Sholeh@cdapress.com.