Dre’s pictures of a bale of turtles got me thinking about collective nouns. There’s a snotty charm in knowing the proper pluralization of a pride of lions or a pod of dolphins, but once the subject hit the internet a few years ago the linguistic nerds got ahold of the idea and went a little bit crazy with it. Sure, it’s great to know that someone decided that a group of pupils should be called a “dilation”, but my interest lies in the more commonly accepted words.
Wikipedia has a nice list of animal names which suits most needs, along with a larger set of lists of collective nouns. I’ve added James Lipton’s An Exaltation of Larks to my Amazon Wish List. If anyone wants to buy it for me I’d be happy to become your resident expert on the matter, on call whenever you need to know the given collective noun for something and aren’t near a computer.