Taking pride in collective nouns

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.