Can anyone give me a site that lists the different names for groups of different animals?
I’ve tried goggling but to no avail.
Thanks.
Actually, more precisely, these words are called “nouns of assemblage” or “nouns of company.” I suspect many of them are tongue-in-cheek. When was the last time you heard/read anyone refer to a “business of flies” or a “richness of martens.”
We used to play a word game in which we invented our own nouns of assemblage, such as a “scold of nuns,” an “arrogance of lead guitarists” or a “fuckload of whores.”
These groups were named, often whimsically, in the medieval English “venereal game” played among the hunting classes, which resulted in “terms of venery” or “venereal terms”—collective nouns for animal groups. See generally James Lipton, An Exaltation of Larks (1991).
For some lists of venereal collective nouns, see Melissa Kaplan, “Beastly Garden of Wordy Delights”; Christchurch City Libraries, “Animal Group Names (Collective Nouns)”; EnchantedLearning.com, “Names of Males, Females, Babies, and Groups of Animals”; Fun With Words, “Collective Nouns”; Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center, “Animal Congregations, or What Do You Call a Group of . . . ?”
Make up your own. That’s what everyone else does.