I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that there are unique names for “bunches” of animals (Bevy of quail, murder of crows, school of fish). However, I’m curious about how and why these were developed.
To some extent, perhaps these go hand in hand with the other unique labels we use for the offpsring, adult male, and adult female of different species. However, I can immediately ascertain their usefulness as a kind of verbal shorthand (“Kit” is easier than “Fox’s young” and “Drake” is easier than “Male Duck”)
However, I haven’t heard the grouping terms used the same way. People don’t say “I saw a troop, a pride, and a herd on safari!” They say they saw a troop of giraffes, a pride of lions, a herd of elephants. Which is no shorter (nor more explanatory) than saying “group of” before each noun.
Has usage evolved (i.e., it used to be okay to just use the term without modifying it)? Or does this simply reflect biologists’ love of naming? Or do they just exist to make for interesting trivia questions and fodder for fifth-grade biology quizzes?
Well, my WAG would be that the more exotic terms (“murder of crows”, “pride of lions”, etc.) were the product of a moneyed leisure class with too much time on their hands. Farmers need to have collective terms for important farm animals like “flock of geese” or “herd of cows”, and hunters sometimes need to refer to a “pack of wolves”, because a wolf pack behaves differently from a single wolf encountered in the forest.
But I’d think that to either a farmer or a hunter, crows would just be “crows”. Maybe “a flock of crows” or “some crows”. They’re not edible, or sporting, so why make up a specific term for them? “Flock” would do, in the normal course of things.
Now I can see the need for “bevy” or “covey” of quail, because when you flush a group of quail, they scatter in a very specific pattern, whereas a “flock” of crows or sparrows behaves differently when flushed.
One reason why the collective nouns aren’t used in isolation (‘pride’ as opposed to ‘pride of lions’) is simple ambiguity. If I said, “I was out for a walk yesterday and saw a murder!”, you wouldn’t know if I meant a group of crows or a homicide. Further, some collective nouns aren’t unique: a pod, for example, may refer to a group of whales, but it can also refer to a group of seals. So, if I simply said, “I saw a pod”, it could mean any number of things! Similarly for such collections as ‘troop’, ‘herd’, etc.
As to why collective nouns such as these exist in the first place (a shrewdness of apes?!), I can only guess that they satisfy someone’s need for ‘making stuff up’, and later calling it ‘trivia.’
There is a list of collective nouns that is frequently referenced (it has terms like a “crash” of rhinoceroses) which is of “uncertain provenance”, at best. IMHO, collective nouns are like spoonerisms – the more amusing they are the less likely they are to be authentic.