Saturday, May 16, 2009

Murder of crow(d)s

Ben Shott writes about words for the NY Times with an occasional weekend competition.

This weekend's competition is to come up with new collective nouns for modern nouns. Collective nouns are the words for groups like pride of lions and murder of crows.

Here's his description:
Many of the collective nouns with which we are familiar can be found in the “Book of St. Albans,” published in 1486. This curious volume, often attributed to Juliana Berners, contains treatises on hawking, hunting and heraldry, as well as a host of, now famous, nouns of assemblage, including:

An exultation of larks; a parliament of rooks; a murmuration of starlings; a shrewdness of apes; a gaggle of geese; a turmoil of porpoises; a business of ferrets; a spring of teal; and a pride of lions.

This weekend, co-vocabularists are invited to submit novel nouns of assemblage for modern phenomena. A bucket of Wiis? A swamp of blogs? A murder of crowds?
You can add to or just check out the contributions at his blog.

(Not sure if you'll need to register to read the blog. I know you do for the NY Times articles.)

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