I’m with you 100% on that one Cranky. 90% of collective nouns are horrible whimsy, just about on a par with puns when it comes to irritating, smart-arsed word-play. They’re not clever and they’re not funny.
No-one ever uses them in everyday speech, yet you still get general knowledge quizzes expecting you to know the ‘correct’ name for a group of one legged goats at night.
A pox on the lot of them!
Here’s a pretty good site that seems to update fairly regularly- I believe I Duck Duck Goose originally linked to it awhile back, but I can’t find the thread.
-j
You’re probably correct, but I don’t know. Check the Oxford English Dictionary, which knows all in these cases. (I don’t have one handy).
I do know that octopi is not the plural of octopus, and is not even a word, in fact. I was really surprised by this, because I’d used it for years, and had heard only this as the plural. But Jerome Lettvin of MIT set me straight when I was interviewing him for my book. I happened to say “octopi”, and the conversation ground to a halt. “What did you say?” he asked. When I told him that I thought it was the correct form of the plural, he hauled out his OED and showed me the real plural form.
There are two of them. The English form is the ugly and cacophonous octopuses. The form derived from Greek is the surprising Octopodes. I now use this everywhere, to show off my learnedness and to piss people off.
Weird pulykamell, I think you are correct. That same thought had occurred to me while posting, but “crash of rhinoceri” was the way that the animal groups link had listed them. Just now, I did a quick online check on OED and did not find rhinoceri.
But I did find rhinocerotic.
<Ba dum…cymbal crash>
However, I did find rhinoceri online at the Merriam-Webster site, complete with audio. (Perhaps they’re wrong - they also listed octopi. My knowledge is too limited for me to judge. So I’ll defer to CalMeacham.)
Just one question - is it octopods or octopodes? Or perhaps both?
It was none other than James Lipton, that most unctuous host of Bravo’s “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” who penned “An Exultation of Larks” some 10-15 years ago, kicking off a lucrative marketing craze – a craze to which I was indifferent.
But the way that stuffed shirt cravenly plies his guests with fulsome praise compels me to coin a Liptonesque neologism (if I may):
“A Lipton of jackasses.” 
“Octopodes”. With an “e”.
Merriam-Webster allows “octopi”, huh? Never thought to check them. As I say, the OED doesn’t. Ordinarily I don’t cave in to the rulings of the BBC and he OED, but I think they’re right in this case.
My friends and I, as kids, used to make up the sort of collective names. Things like:
**A Pack of Card PLayers
A Great Deal of Card Players**
An Exaltation of Larks came out a lot longer ago tha 10-15 years. More like 30 years ago. No doubt about it – I know what I was doing at the time. You must’ve been indifferent longer than you thought.
pulykamell is not weird. I, on the other hand, suck at punctuation.
Lipton, J., An Exaltation of Larks (or, The Venereal Game), Grossman Publishers and then Penguin Books, 1968/1977.
Quoting from Meriam-Webster
So, basically it’s their dwelling, even though it can also double as a collective noun (I’ve never heard it used as such though).
And 15th century is at any rate pre-“watership down”.
In an ancient, dusty joke, a schoolboy is asked to offer a collective noun. With no hesitation, the lad answers, “trashcan.”
–Nott, the large
Just as an aside, this was the theme of today’s New York Times Crossword puzzle.
There are, of course, no higher aspirations in life.
“Ock-TOP-o-deez.” Eck-sellent.
Quoth pulykamell:
No, no, no… The plural of “Rhinoceros” is obviously “Rhinos”.