Re: A ravening of ravens

On 3/27/06, Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@...> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> How many different collective nouns do you know?
> Eg, a herd of goats or cattle, a  flock or (Australian) mob
> of sheep, a mob of kangaroos, a gaggle of geese, a swarm
> of bees, a murder of crows ...  I'm sure there must be
> many more that don't come to mind immediately.
James Lipton's _An Exaltation of Larks: the Ultimate Edition_
(Viking, 1991) lists >1000 such terms -- a few dozen
traditional or archaic ones, and hundreds more recently proposed.

> And which common creatures don't have a collective
> noun?  Is it only the solitary ones, like cats?
Litpon cites 15th-century sources for "a clowder of cats",
or possibly "a clutter of cats" (allowing for sound changes).

> What prompted the questions was listening to a flock of
> ravens quarreling in a nearby gum-tree the night before
> last.  A "ravening of ravens" would describe their feeding
> habits quite nicely!
That's good.  Lipton gives "an unkindness of ravens", citing
an 1885 _The Folk Lore of British Birds_.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm