The Merriam-Webster Dictionary say that a collective noun is:
“a noun such as ‘team’ or ‘flock’ that refers to a group of people or things”
At LoveEnglish on March 15, 2019 there is an article titled Collective Nouns: 200+ Most Important Collective Nouns in English. And there is a book-length, 153 page Collective-Noun-Catalog from Miami University (the one in Ohio). The downtown Boise Public Library has a 2013 book titled A Compendium of Collective Nouns: from an armory of aardvarks to a zeal of zebras. This year there is another book, described in an article by Heather Colpitts in the Langley Advance Times on May 19, 2022 titled ‘A holiness of donuts’ and other quirky collective nouns are in Langley writer’s new book.
We commonly think of those describing:
African Animals
Camels caravan
Cheetahs coalition
Crocodiles bask
Elephants parade
Giraffes tower
Hippopotamuses bloat
Horses herd
Leopards leap
Lions pride
Rhinoceros crash
Tigers streak
Zebras zeal
However, we also can describe people by their:
Professions
accountants column
astronomers constellation
bankers vault
barbers clipping
beauticians vanity
carpenters pound
chefs dash
criminals cell
electrochemists battery
fishermen drift
florists bloom
gangsters mob
hoodlums gang
lawyers bar
librarians shelf
linguists clause
mathematicians set
pickpockets snatch
plumbers flood
postmen express
preachers pontification
weathermen flurry
welders spatter
But we don’t have that many good words for:
Foods
Apples bushel
Asparagus bundle
Bagels boulder
Bananas bunch
Beans hill
burritos boatload
Chowder cauldron
Corn shock
Donuts holiness
Eggs clutch
Grapes cluster
Peas pod
Soup kettle
tacos truckload
tarts jam
tortillas flotilla
This post was inspired by an article by Brenda Rodriguez at KTVB TV on January 6, 2023 titled 67 years of struggle, triumph, tortillas – family-owned Idaho bakery celebrating more success. I couldn’t find a collective noun for tortillas in the Collective-Noun-Catalog and came up with flotilla.
The image of lions came from Wikimedia Commons.
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