A Self-indulgence of Bloggers

on Oct 12 in General by

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about collective nouns. On one hand I enjoy them for their poetry: a murder of crows, skulk of foxes, bloat of hippopotami. On the other some of them get a little ridiculous: a shrewdness of apes, flange of baboons, horde of hamsters.

What I would like to know is who actually regulates them. Wiktionary lists 13 different collective nouns for bees alone: bike, byke, cast, cluster, colony, drift, erst, game, grist, hive, rabble, and swarm. That’s more words than Eskimos have for snow (although, interestingly enough, not as many as the English have for farts). Now granted wikis are far from being the most reliable source in academia, but still it is evident that someone needs to inject a little order into proceedings.

With that in mind I am proposing some new collective nouns for my own family. Granted, barring the invention of some sort of time travel device or cloning machine, the possibility of there being more than one of Kerry, Amy, Evan or I in the same place at the same time is fairly remote. But I’ve seen Multiplicity, I know it could happen. It’s always best to be prepared for such things.

  • A Bumbling of Dans
  • An Organisation of Kerrys
  • A Pinkness of Amys
  • A Mucus of Evans

What would be your own collective nouns?

Related posts:

  1. Guest Post Tuesday: Bon Bon
  2. A-Z of Hadrian’s Bloggers: Idaho Dad & ImPerceptible
  3. A-Z of Hadrian’s Bloggers: Gary & Ian
  4. A-Z of Hadrian’s Bloggers: Clair & Dad Who Writes
  5. A-Z of Hadrian’s Bloggers: Martin

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