This list comes from Merriam Webster, who culled them from a 15th-century book of venery and more modern sources. Elsewhere in this issue, the Editor refers to a fluffle of rabbits. This was legitimately found online.

1. A murder of crows.
2. An exaltation of larks.
3. A skein of geese in flight.
4. A raft of floating ducks.
5. A wedge of flying swans.
6. A troop of baboons.
7. A parliament of owls.
8. A tuxedo of penguins.
9. A destruction of cats. (Descriptive, but not the usual one.)
10. An ambush of tigers.

You should feel free, of course, to invent your own collective nouns. They might catch on.

A babble of dictionaries.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

10.09.18 Front Page

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