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Collective noun for Wedgies?

To: Peter Shute <>
Subject: Collective noun for Wedgies?
From: Alan McBride <>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:14:51 +1000
hi all,

This site should give you a good idea of how many eagles can occur in one area.

http://www.baldeagleinfo.com/eagle/eagle1.html

I guess 3,000 - 4,000 would warrant a collective noun.

Collective nouns are indeed in old English usage and have been adapted the 
world over via the wonderful language of English, i.e US people probably coined 
the Kettle of hawks as they see that effect more than British people.

aerie or eyrie means "flat" or "a platform", hence the nest. It is nothing to 
do with the young other than coincidental.

I have lots of friends who love collective nouns and indeed they are great fun 
and useful in the way we communicate with each other, hence the interest 
already here with a flurry of e-mails;-)

>From earlier today: 

One of the best pages on the web is here:

http://www.ojohaven.com/collectives/

I warn you though it can take hours to get off this page:-)

Best

Alan


On 31/08/2010, at 10:48 , Peter Shute wrote:

Does anyone really use collective nouns for any useful purpose? According to 
Wikipedia (see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#Terms_of_venery_.28words_for_groups_of_animals.29)
 they date from the 15th century and "were used by gentlemen to distinguish 
themselves from yeomen and others". There are a few that are in common enough 
use to warrant everyone using them, e.g. a pride of lions, or more locally, a 
mob of emus, but for most of the rest, I'd bet that if you have to look up 
which word to use then hardly anyone else is going to know the word either, so 
you're going to look pretentious for using it outside of poetry, or for fun.

There's a list of collective nouns for birds here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collective_nouns_for_birds

There aren't many there that wouldn't raise eybrows if you used them. Some of 
them might be in more common use in scientific circles, I wouldn't know. I 
suspect some might be in use in falconry, but none are listed there for eagles, 
maybe because the loose gatherings they apparently occasionally form don't 
really count as a group, they just happen to be in the same area, although I'm 
happy to be corrected about that, I've never seen more than 2 or 3.

Peter Shute



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