I’m sure most people on this board have heard some of the collective nouns for groups of animals - a herd of cattle, a pride of lions, and a covey of quail. I’ve seen long lists of these collective names, and some are quite fanciful, such as a parliament of owls, a murder of crows, and an exaltation of larks.
What I’d like to know is:
*Who the %#$@ says so?
Where did thes names come from? Sounds to me like somebody sat around some rainy afternoon and made them up, rather than coming into being through general use. Can anybody dope out the origin of animal collective nouns?
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).
Some sources have indicated that Lipton spent a lot of time reading through documents and would include a listing for any collective noun he found, even if it was only used one time in “The Journal of South Woldfield Hunting Club.” There’s a strong case that most of his terms were only used a handful of times by a handful of people, that they are nonce word suddenly given the status of established terms.
To at least some degree, they’re still being coined today. For instance, Fritz Leiber came up with “A tower of waterspouts.”
As with most “market-driven” consumables, success and failure depend entirely on popularity. If a lot of people use them, they endure; if not, they fade into antiquity.
