This is amazing to me. And officially one of my new favorite things. I was reading my book aloud to a friend and she suddenly stopped me and questioned my use of “a herd of ostriches.” A herd of ostriches didn’t sound right to her. “Shouldn’t it be a flock of ostriches?” she asked. And, always grateful to use an excuse to do research and not write, I went online. And after finding all of these fabulous websites about collective nouns, I’ve discovered that no, it’s definitely a herd of ostriches. They’re only a flock when you refer to them as birds–if that opportunity ever comes up. (One site actually went so far as to call them a pride, but I don’t think I go for that.)

I found three sites to be the most useful. The first is a UK site that seems to be the most serious. Although even they have the “Some That Might Be” section which is a little quirky and funny. The second is a Wikipedia site, and since we all know how I feel about Wikipedia… It’s all right, just not as entertaining as could be because I have misplaced prejudices against it. The site AllSorts.org is the best. All Sorts – a linguistic experiment. You can follow them on Twitter and everyone posts their own ideas to the website. Brilliant! And so fun–all of the random entries are there. “A clot of vampires,” “a brace of dentists,” “a whorde of prostitutes” (just FYI, “whorde” is defined as “an angry mob of slutty chicks… can be seen at shitty concerts or @ a party watching Gilmore Girls” in the Urban Dictionary)….some of them put the old favorite “a murder of crows” to shame.

My absolute favorite, however, and one I’ve never been able to find since, is “a something of models.” Online I found “a bulimia of models,” “a tantrum of models,” “a slouch of models,” but none of those are it (although “slouch of models” is pretty good). It was perfect and I wish I could find it again. Some friends and I were discussing it one day and I’m sure it was in a book. And I think the book was An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton, but I can’t remember for sure… So frustrating. Although there is another book that looks interesting–A Crash of Rhinoceroses: A Dictionary of Collective Nouns by Rex Collings. It’s written by a British author, however, so I can’t imagine that was the book we would have been discussing. Lipton first wrote his book back in the 60’s or 70’s, and this edition is the updated “ultimate” edition published in 1993. It seems Collings’ book is also published in 1993, so I wonder if one prompted the other? I suppose I’ll just have to read the books myself. Sigh… Yet another excuse to not get writing done. It’s a disease, I tell you…

Collective Nouns