What’s the collective noun for…
There are very many collective nouns, or to use their more correct name, nouns of assemblage, that are used to describe specific groups of animals.
Some of them are in common usage and therefore your children may already know them (eg a flock of sheep, a plague of locusts and a herd of elephants).
Others, however, are quite obscure and so your child would do well to build up their knowledge of those more unusual or infrequently use collective nouns by reference to the list below.
There’s a strong possibility that some of these words will appear in the eleven plus, either in a list or as a test of spelling knowledge.
List of collective nouns of assemblage
- A barren of mules
- A bevy of quail
- A bloat of hippopotamuses
- A broad of chickens
- A bunch of pigeons
- A bunch of seals
- A business of ferrets
- A cackle of hyenas
- A catch of fish
- A cete of badgers
- A charm of finches
- A chattering of choughs
- A cloud of insects
- A clutch of eggs
- A colony of badgers
- A colony of bats
- A covey of ptarmigan
- A desert of lapwing
- A drift of swine
- A fall of lambs
- A fall of woodcock
- A flock of birds
- A flock of bustards
- A flock of camels
- A flock of chickens
- A flock of ducks
- A flock of geese
- A flock of goats
- A flock of parrots
- A flock of pigeons
- A flock of seagulls
- A flock of sheep
- A school of whales
- A sege of herons
- A shoal of bass
- A shoal of fish
- A shoal of herrings
- A shoal of pilchards
- A shoal of salmon
- A shower of bastards
- A shrewdness of apes
- A sloth of bears
- A smack of jellyfish
- A sounder of wild boar
- A spring of teals
- A streak of tigers
- A string of horses
- A stud of horses
- A stud of mares
- A swarm of ants
- A swarm of bees
- A swarm of butterflies
- A swarm of eels
- A swarm of flies
- A swarm of gnats
- A swarm of insects
- A swarm of rats
- A tower of giraffes
- A troupe of monkeys
- A troupe of shrimp
- A wake of buzzards
- A walk of snipe
- A wilderness of monkeys
- A zoo of wild animals
- An army of ants
- An exaltation of larks
- An intrusion of cockroaches
- An unkindness of ravens
What a wonderful set of names
If the above list doesn’t start you wondering ‘who comes up with these names?’ then you need to get out more!
If you do find those names fascinating (I do) then you’ll probably find my next posts interesting, because I’ll be including some further lists (and who doesn’t love a listicle) covering other aspects of this wonderful English language of ours.
Stay tuned.
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