I seem to remember in some English lesson at some point in my education we spent a whole half hour talking about collective nouns; the high point of the lesson being when our teacher insisted, much to our collective disbelieve, that the collective noun for a gathering of crows was “a murder.” One of my classmates responded by asking whether the collective noun for English teachers was “a fabrication.”

Thinking of that amusing little interchange, it now seems to me that “a fabrication” is a more appropriate collective noun for a collection of collective nouns, since there appears to be no rhyme nor reason in the selection of some of these words. It’s as though a group of Oxford dons invented them all in an evening of heavy drinking. With that in mind, here is my fabrication of collective nouns that you are unlikely to know.

1. A bale of turtles. Excuse me, but when and where did anyone ever bale turtles? Cotton, hay and paper get baled, jute and sisal as well I shouldn’t wonder, but turtles? Let me consult the dictionary. OK, baling involves tightly wrapping and binding with rope, wire, cords or hoops. If anyone baled turtles the animals rights folks would be on it in minutes. So maybe that’s it. Maybe the drunken dons came up with this in order to exasperate the animal rights folk.
2. A blessing of unicorns. This wins the award for the most irrelevant collective noun ever, just nosing out the rarely used “necklace of hen’s teeth.”  Supposedly, it’s really lucky to see a unicorn, so I guess seeing a multitude of them would simply scale up the amount of luck received. However, I’m not sure how anyone could know that, as I’ve surfed the web exhaustively and the people who’ve seen unicorns are choosing to stay anonymous. That makes it difficult to ascertain whether unicorns ever appear in a group. I presume they must, else how do they breed?
3. A sloth of bears. This is completely unfair. First of all you shouldn’t be able to use one animal as the collective noun for another, at least not without there being a right of reply. If there’s such a things as a sloth of bears then, it’s only fair, there should also a bear of sloths. But there isn’t. There’s only a bed of sloths. A bed of sloths works fine as a metaphor, but actually if the Goldilocks story is true then a bed of bears would work fine too. It’s possible that a sloth of bears is just a corruption of a sleuth of bears. This is an alternative but not much of one, because a sleuth is a very singular detective. Most likely sleuth really comes from the old English noun, which meant animal track. Bears certainly leave tracks and if sloth is a corruption of sleuth, then when you follow a sleuth you might find a sloth of bears.
4. A pulpititude of preachers. This has to qualify as the worst of all collective nouns in almost every respect. It could have been a lot better. It could have been a humility of preachers, or a baptism of preachers, or a pontification of preachers, or even a hellfire of preachers (if you like the rot-in-hell variety). It could even be a blessing of preachers, but the unicorns snaffled that one. Pulpititude isn’t even a real word, it’s an awkward false construction that doesn’t even pretend to be Greek or Latin. It’s an abomination. That would have worked too, wouldn’t it; an abomination of preachers?
5. A pod of whales. First let me tell you about a pageant of iPhones. I’m making this one up, of course, or perhaps I’m proposing it. About six months ago I went to the cinema to watch some movie or other and just about everyone in the audience over the age of 3 had an iPhone. I know, because when the request came up on the screen to turn your mobile phone off, a pageant of iPhones appeared in the darkness and winked out one by one. It said, in no uncertain terms; iPhone therefore I am. How very sad. Anyway a pageant of iPhones is intuitively fine, whereas “a pod of whales” is completely counterintuitive. A pod is an elongated seed vessel, normally associated with leguminous plants. A pod of whales is thus one humungous pod. How does that make any sense? That’s why you have schools, herds and gams of whales – so you can avoid this ridiculous use of the word pod. Thinking about it, how is the iPod podlike anyway?
6. A neverthriving of jugglers. There is no collective noun for unicyclists, trapeze artists, lion tamers or tightrope walkers. So why is there a collective noun for jugglers? And why is the collective noun a “neverthriving”? I’ve surfed the web to find some reason to this and the only reference I can find suggests that the word was coined in the 15th century to indicate that juggling was a bad career choice. Naturally, economic circumstances change and neverthriving may not be the right word anymore, especially if you’re a good enough juggler for Cirque Du Soleil. A more modern collective noun might be a “doingquitewellactually” of jugglers, or in the current economic climate, an “atleastigottajob” of jugglers.
7. A sneak of weasels. Some collective nouns seem just right and this is definitely the case with a sneak of weasels. It’s not that weasels are particularly sneaky, it’s just that they get characterized that way by A A Milne in Toad of Toad Hall. Weasels eat eggs, which might be thought of as a little sneaky, especially if you happen to be the mother bird. As regards their own young, the mother weasels carry them around in their mouths, rather than leave them in their burrows. You can call that sneaky if you want. As the babies grow the families (or sneaks if you prefer) hunts together until the young grow. The sneaks that prey together stay together.
8. A drudge of skeletons. A drudge is someone who works hard at boring tasks, who works in a low servile job, who labors for scant reward. That’s exactly the kind of work you get if you’re a skeleton. First of all there’s not much work, but you take what you can get. Most likely you’ll get hired by some medical college or other. You’ll get to participate in anatomy classes and, admittedly you’ll be out there center stage, but its the Professor of Medicine that gets to say “the foot bone’s connected to the leg bone, the leg bone’s connected to the knee bone, etc.” You just stand there looking fleshless. What can I tell you? At least it’s a job.
9. A superfluity of nuns. This sounds like it’s intended to be a joke, but it may not be. Let me quote to you from Nuns and Nunneries: Sketches Compiled Entirely from Romish Authorities. “The second degree of poverty is to deprive yourself of whatever is superfluous: for the smallest superfluity will prevent a perfect union of the soul with God.” Nuns who have not yet achieved the perfection hinted at here thus, both collectively and individually, represent a superfluity.
10. A murmuration of starlings: When I first ran into this collective noun I figured that it had to do with the murder of crows. In general, crows are carrion feeders and don’t murder anything. They wait for some other species to do the murdering and they feed on what’s left. Nevertheless, when it’s murder out there the crows will have a banquet. Ravens are equally enthusiastic about carrion, but we’re more circumspect in their case. So we speak of an “unkindness” of ravens. Starlings probably just watch all this behavior, feeling mildly revolted, and murmur about it. But no. To my surprise, I’ve discovered (Oh the power of the Internet) that starlings actually do murmur. This collective noun is spot on. You can watch and listen to the murmuring on the video below.

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