Talk:English collective nouns

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[edit] PLEASE READ: rules for new candidates

In a break from usual tradition of "edit as you see fit" I'm going to ask people to list new candidate nouns here. I am running an Access database which generates the table scripts automatically - it is a lot easier than scrolling through all that wiki-code.

If you modify or correct something, could you also list it here, so I can edit the database. If anyone wants the db, just email me (address is on my personal page). It's currently only 200K in size.

Please list candidates here. If you can find a dictionary reference for it, please say so. Many collective nouns are obscure and archaic - hence a citation from any (respectable) dictionary will be deemed to validate the term.

If you know the term is spurious, then say so. I have no problem listing spurious nouns, so long as they are clearly marked as such. Things like "a clutch of mechanics" have humour value, even if illegitimate. - MMGB

Nice one, Manning, I wish I'd thought of doing this! I'll put some more up for the collection, and many thanks for your help with this. sjc

- shelfful of books
- carpet of flowers
- drift of snow 
- stack of papers, cards
- arsenal of weapons
- hail of bullets
- coil of stamps 
- tissue of lies
- circle of friends
- trail of tears
- growth of trees
- series of games
- hand of cards
- pack of cards
- can of worms - I think this only refers to a problematic situation, and is not a collective term for worms
- sleeze of sponges (possible spelling issues)
- cord of wood
- bushel of wheat/corn/potatoes (also peck = 1/4 bushel)
- barrel of oil (42 gallons)
- TCF of natural gas (trillion cubic feet)
- Quad BTU or just Quad (quadrillion British Thermal Units)

This should live on collective noun, shouldn't it? And, given that we're not going to have subpages, all the subpages could conveniently live on, e.g., collective nouns sorted by subject and collective nouns for birds. --LMS

Oh bugger. - MMGB

Sorry, really I am. :-) --LMS

This is a cool idea. Anthology of prostitutes. Heh, heh. Not brilliant prose, but I just wanted to contratulate you, Manning. I think it's good work! <>< tbc

Actually, I originally started this Talk page to try to get a better definition of the subject at hand. I gave a couple of examples that I thought might be questionable, thinking that they might have been omitted for a definite reason. They weren't really intended as suggested additions, but rather to try to identify the scope of the subject. Partly this was because lots of obvious ones were missing. For example, deck of cards is included, but not stack of cards, or pile of cards, or hand of cards. Am I to understand that all these should be included, but the list just isn't yet complete? -HWR

Always assume the list isn't complete. - MMGB

- drift of snow - isn't this singular?

Wouldn't that exclusion also apply to:

- anthology of prose
- heap of trash
- slew of homework
- wad of money

hmmm... fair comment. - MMGB

Prose, money and those

I've got a list I've had lying around on my hard drive for quite a while, which was based off of information in Paul Hellweg's "Insomniac's Dictionary." Rather than check the existing lists and cull out duplicates, though, I figured I'd let you do all the hard work for me with your fancy-dancy database. :)

Paul has a whole whack of references at the back of his book, but doesn't specify which ones these came out of. Still, the book seems well-researched, so perhaps it counts as a suitable reference on its own.

(long list deleted, one by one...) Every single item you listed was already included, except for the one listed below. I'm waiting for opinions as to what to do with this one.

Wolves     Route - currently listed as "rout". couldn't find a citation for "route"
Looks like a typo or an American unfamiliar with the English word "rout" to me... I always thought it was a rout of wolves, myself. sjcTW:

a quarrel of crossbow bolts

sjc

Also, Manning, I notice that goldfinches are no longer referenced as a charm. I have always referred to them as a charm (we get about twenty or so of them at a time in our garden in summer sometimes), and so does everyone else I know who knows what they're on about! They are perfectly delightful. I am reinstating the most prevalent usage of charm as a collective noun (in my neck of the woods at any case). sjc

After 50 or so of them flew up in my face out of some high grass, I coined the phrase "rush of goldfinches". Gold rush, get it.

Could someone whose opinion of collective nouns is slightly more NPOV than my personal burning hatred point out in the intro to the article that collective nouns are not a fixed construction of the English language -- one can refer to a group of any sort of thing as just that, a "group", or indeed mix and match in any way one sees fit. This would be for the benefit of non-native speakers: I would hate them to think they actually have to learn all this rubbish. Collective nouns are very much a literary game, and even that is a tenous description as any writer worth their salt recognises them as dead metaphors. -- Tarquin 15:44 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)

The worst mistake I have made in my Wikipedia career was rudely and ignorantly trashing one of the collective nouns collections (both verbally, and due to a browser bug, physically). I have stayed away from them since then, out of some combination of embarrassment and good manners, so I can't be the one to clear up this either, but all this stuff is distinctly countereducational. I hate hurting people's feelings. I have stayed away from this since my first weeks in Wikipedia and even took it off my Watchlist because I was so upset with myself, but Tarquin's comments have brought me reluctantly back to the issue. Fun's fun, but somehow this isn't fun.
Here is my summary.
  • Like Tarquin said, a group is a group and that's that for 99 per cent of the cases.
  • There are a few English words (two dozen?) meaning a group of people or things -- clan, band, choir, etc.
  • There are also a few more legitimate specialized words for groups of certain kinds of things -- pod of whales, gaggle of geese (which means flying geese, by the way, walking geese are a flock, like most birds).
  • Then there was/is a parlor game of making these things up for other groupings -- fanfare of strumpets is my favorite. I just added rush of goldfinches up above in the same spirit.
  • Then there are many that are just plain dumb, aanthology of aardvarks, etc.
  • Finally there are the inane, that don't even meet the extremely low requirements of this category, such as (culled from above) hail of bullets, coil of stamps, tissue of lies, trail of tears
The root article here haltingly manifests some awareness of these distinctions, but the collection of links goes to cripplingly overcoded and barely editable list articles that provide almost no guidance in the use of these nouns and are filled with cases marked "spurious", or with worthless, unannotated sublists like brigade of soldiers, company of soldiers, platoon of soldiers, squad of soldiers. Overall this has been a great deal of hard work on someone's part that is not really good encyclopedia material. Compare it to English plural to see how weak it really is. (Yes, I started the plural article, but many many people have contributed to it. It is the only article I regularly worked on that now seems almost complete.) Ortolan88

[edit] are there free etymology dictionary?

the question in the article Do there exist any freely accessible dictionaries of etymology on the Web? is moved here.

among collegiate-sized dictionaries, websters, merriem webster, American Heritage, AHD is the most endowed with respect to etynomology.

they are freely avaliable on the web: m-w.com, dictionary.com

PS AHD provides a "notes" section on "collective nouns", see dictionary.com on flock.

Xah P0lyglut 06:23, 2003 Dec 9 (UTC)

For free etymology online, check out http://www.etymonline.com/. It is mostly based on the OED but doesn't contain all the words they've got over there.

It might be worth adding a note to redirect people who are looking for mass noun. On Wiktionary I'm finding people constantly using the term "collective noun" when they are really talking about the idea of "uncountable noun" / "mass noun" / "non-count noun" — Hippietrail 12:35, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Comments on specific examples

  • "A wing of aircraft" I belive this applies 1) only to military aircraft, and 2) implies a specifc number of craft, just as a "squad" or a "regiment" is not a general collective noun for soldiers. DES (talk) 20:01, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A roll of coins" I belvie is a fairly specific arrangement, referring to a stack of coins rolled in a sleeve of soem sort. It does not applie to a loose pile of coins. In fact usually this implies a particualr number. For example in the U.S. a roll of quarters is a set of 40, or $10. DES (talk) 20:01, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A rouleau of coins" same coments as on "rollof coins" as this is merly the french version of that term. DES (talk) 20:01, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A wealth of information" while this ia a common phrase, the term "wealth " can also be applied to an ample provision of any substance. DES (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A chain of islands" I belive this implies a specific, albiet common arrangement -- i.e. a realatively linear grouping. DES (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A cache of jewels" a "cache" is any hidden or safely contained repository of valuable substance, such as food, gold, treasure, or data. It is as far as I know nbot in any way particular to jewels. DES (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A ring of keys" refers to a specifc arranngemet, i.e. a goup of keys held on or joined by a ring. it would not apply to a pile of loose keys, nor to any general collection of keys. DES (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A convoy of lorries" "Convoy" applies to any group of vehicles traveling togehter with a common purpose -- derived from a group of merchant ships traveling under the escort of warships. DES (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "An anthology of prose" an Anthology is any colletion of shorter works into a single colective work, adn applies no more to prose than to verse or pictures. It also does not apply to prose not so collected, so it implies a moderatly specific arrangement. DES (talk) 20:18, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A book of wagers" I belive this implies a set of wagers collected in a betting book (hence the term Bookie) and not any general collection of wagers. DES (talk) 20:18, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • A faculty of academics" this refers only to a group that in soem sense forms the personel of a specific school, college, or other institution, or in some cases a departmetn or division within such an insititution. It would not apply to a general group of academics, nor to only a portion of the personel of such an institution. DES (talk) 20:39, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A staff of employees" again thsi normally implies the complete set of the employees of a particualr firm or employer, or perhaps of a partiucualr division or section of such a firm. it would not apply to a group of employees from multiple employers, nor to only soem of the employees for a given employer. DES (talk) 20:39, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A banner of knights" I think, although I would need to verify, that this applies to a specific grouping, like a "squadron of cavalry". I belvive it orginally implied all the Knights following a particular leader (such as a "Knight bannerette). DES (talk) 20:39, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A cortege of mourners" This refers to the complete set of mourners in a funeral procession. it does not refer to only some of those mourners, nor to morners in other circumstances, nor to collections from more than one such procession. DES (talk) 20:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A team of players" this should mean the complete set -- all the players for a particualr side in a particualr sport. DES (talk) 20:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A cohort of students" this typically means all and only the students of a particular year or age. The term is also applied in demographic or population studies, to any group of people of the same age, or who passed a particular milestone (such as marrying or giving birth) in a particualr year. It is thus a very specific term, but it is not particualrly specific to students. DES (talk) 20:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A coven of witches" implies a specific group who gather for particualr rituals, not any genric group of witches. DES (talk) 20:48, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • "A congregation of worshipers" this refers to the particualr group who gather at a particular place or institution for worship, either on a specific occasion or on a regualr basis. it does not refer to any general gathering or group of worshipers, nor to a group that is only part of a congregation. DES (talk) 20:48, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • In the Royal Air Force groups aircraft and the names of their officers are (from smallest) Flight Lieutenant, Squadron Leader, Wing Commander and Group Captain. Hence Flight, Squadron, Wing and Group.

[edit] etymology question

I've never heard of a "parcel of pigs", but the variant "passel" made me do a doubletake! Is this actually used somewhere? If it is, and this is what struck me, is it possible that this was derived from Yiddish or Ashkenazi Hebrew? This seems almost paradoxically impossible, but "passel" is one way I've heard Yinglish speakers pronouncing פסול ... "pasûl", a Hebrew word for "unfit", "unclean", "improper" and by extension in Yinglish, "prohibited". This pretty well describes the halakhic view of pigs... Also, another Hebrew word, derived from the same shoresh, is פסל ... "'pɛ sɛl", meaning "idol"... If this is the source, it pretty well describes, at least according to one story, how a pig used by Antiochus sparked the Maccabean revolt... Or is this all just fanciful conjecture and amazing coincidence? Tomertalk 19:46, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merger proposal

I am proposing a merger of plural, nullar, trial (grammatical number), paucal, collective noun and singulative with grammatical number. Here are my reasons:

  • Most of those other entries have very little in them. They could easily become sections, or even paragraphs in 'grammatical number';
  • One exception is the plural entry, which does contain quite a bit, but a lot of what it has could just as well be in a general entry about 'grammatical number';
  • I think that some of what is currently in the plural article might be used to improve the quality of the 'grammatical number' article;

A related page which is probably best left separate is the one on the dual number, which seems too large to merge with 'grammatical number'. See also Talk:Grammatical_number#Merger_proposal. FilipeS 14:57, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposal withdrawn. See Talk:Grammatical_number#Merger_proposal. FilipeS 20:14, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Collateral vandalism on birds pages

A user is repeatedly censoring the collective noun of birds on some pages, at least Lark and Raven. Editors of collective nouns may be interested in chiming in about what I see as unilateral and unencyclopedian vandalism. Issue commented with diffs at User_talk:Jimfbleak#Your_vandalism_on_Raven_and_Lark.

Note: the user seem in the habit of purging his talk page without archival, especially for censoring criticism; you may have to look at this revision from today if my item has been deleted.

-- 62.147.38.149 11:29, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


I am the user referred to, and if anyone believes that I am a vandal, please look at my user contributions (20,000 plus). The anon user above persists in inappropriate additions to Lark and Raven, despite my explanation that the made-up Victorian terms he uses have no genuine usage outside lists of collective nouns. If the terms are meaningful at all, (and the anon user provides no references) they apply only to the Common Raven and Skylark.
Can anyone give a counterexample, eg a published reference to an exultation of any of the African or Asian larks?
Furthermore, despite my pointing out that vandal is a term of abuse, the user persists in using it, and did not have the decency to let me know he was denigrating me on this forum. More in sorrow than anger, jimfbleak 12:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I've just noticed the other snide dig. I delete all old and dealt with talk content - please look at the example the anon user gives, and decide for yourselves. I never delete ongoing material, despite the innuendo. It is easy to retrieve old edits from history, so I've never bothered to archive jimfbleak 12:47, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
What about this compromise this for the lark family, assuming anon doesn't produce verification that exultation is used for all larks (edits must be verifiable)?
"The collective noun for larks is a flock (sources: Mullarney, Svensson, Zetterstrom and Grant, Collins Bird Guide ISBN 0-00-219728-6, Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa: The Birds of the Western Palearctic)"
Raven is more of a problem in that the species I know about do not actually form flocks. One of the nonsenses of these so-called collective nouns is that they are apllied to birds that do not form flocks, such as ravens and owls. they are basically a twee literary conceit with no place in a scientifically orientated article.
jimfbleak 14:23, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Good point about collective nouns applied to birds that do not actually hang out together. I came to the talk page to see if anyone else had objected to the example in the introduction being a "parliament of owls" since 1) it is obscure and therefore is not as helpful at immediately introducing the topic as a more common term and 2) it is, in fact, a ridiculous term that would never apply to birds outside of a zoo. ~~Ventifact

Hmm, I just noticed that the "parliament of owls" example links to the article on The Silver Chair (C.S. Lewis), which has convinced me that using it as the introductory example was based on someone's personal fancy. ~~Ventifact

[edit] American English Usage

The entry's remark on collective nouns' use in U.S. English was as follows when I found it: In the English spoken in the United States and at least in other Indo-European languages, one says "the team is..." (seen as a singular noun, unless it is actually "teams"). This seemed remarkably garbled and unclear, so I have altered it. I am not sure what the reference to Indo-European languages was supposed to mean, so I have removed it; was it supposed to say that in all other IE languages collective nouns are always singular? Also it might be worth mentioning that the music industry tends to be the major American exception to using collective nouns as singular ("the band are currently on tour"). 216.186.101.104Ventifact

[edit] Other Languages?

Are collective nouns used in other languages?

If so, please list here.

Tabletop 07:34, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Metonymic merging of grammatical number: AmE epistemology

The recent change that I reverted was not an improvement; in fact it obscured the reference to the very idea that there are epistemological considerations of how language users do or don't define "right" and "wrong" in grammar, and thus it was not NPOV, which the earlier version was. The straw-man example added, "The cars am traveling fast", is only speciously parallel to the metonymical shift seen with collectives: yes, it has "number mismatch", but not for any etically logical reason. Before edit-warring on this topic, please make sure that you understand what epistemology and metonymy are. Lumbercutter 15:33, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

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