![]() ![]() But there is no term for an individual animal irrespective of gender or age (unlike, say, “horses, a horse, stallion, mare, colt,” “sheep, a sheep, ram, ewe, lamb.”) One farmer I knew used to get around this by calling them “cattle-beasts.The aim of this article is to study “collective” nouns (i.e. “Cattle” is collective and plural bull applies to the male, cow to the female, and calf to the young. One interesting anomaly is that there is no general term for individuals of domestic cattle. There are a few idiosyncratic usages, such as “pod of whales” and “mob of kangaroos,” the latter obviously of fairly recent vintage. Herd serves for most grazing animals (except sheep, for which flock is mysteriously used), pack for social carnivores (except lions), flock for birds, swarm for insects, and school for fish. There are rather few collective terms that are used by naturalists. And I wonder how far back “school of fish” goes - akthough I believe it’s probably derived from “shoal.”) My guess is that very few of these collective terms predate the 1400s (these being herd, flock, pack though according to the OED “flock of seagulls” is a relativly recent usage. While I’m not sure of its antiquity, “murder of crows” may very well refer to their liking for carrion and thus battlefields and other scenes of slaughter. And “exaltation” is an entirely appropriate term to use for larks, which fly high in the air in their courtship display. Actually, the coiners of the terms were probably far more familiar with the hunting of larks (which were used as food during that era in England) than they were in hunting lions. ![]() But the only real difference between them is that pride of lions has survived in general use, and exaltation of larks has not. These do, in many cases, represent fanciful coinages, in part due to the need of the aristocracy to validate their superiority by deveoloping technical terms for every aspect of aristoratic pursuits such as hunting. Both terms are of similar antiquity and from the same tradition, that of venery (hunting). Thanks to JeffB’s cites from the OED, we see that exaltation of larks predates pride of lions. It’s possible some of these terms are only used by zoologists, in which case it’s jargon, or only by people trying to show how clever they are, in which case it’s bogus. ![]() For example, I don’t know the origin of “murder of crows”, but the only time I hear it used is when someone asks “What is a group of crows called?” (or when some movie executive is trying to be clever). Some terms are contrived, but that does not make them bogus. By your reasoning, a “pride of lions” is a bogus usage. I somewhat agree with you, but not entirely. ![]() Personally, unless the original meaning of “exaltation” meant group of larks- and we then applied the word to the common usages- I have my doubts.Īs a rule of thumb (not always true) if that “collective noun” is a word that normally has no group meaning, and it sounds “cute”, such as 'crach of rhinos"- then it is likely bogus. **Many of those 'collective nouns", such as a “crash” of rhinos, that that silly book “An exaltation of larks” list- were made up for a Victorian parlor game, and never actually used, or even intended to be used. *Originally posted by Danielinthewolvesden * ![]()
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