This entry started out as a 4 paragraph affair on the contraversial Kansas State Schoolboard. Verily, it bristled with epithets, jibes, slurs, and opprobrium. It was sooo good, and sooo true that I realized it was too good to publish here. And too obvious. Any first grader who has ever ridden a schoolbus or seen southpark has the necessary vocabulary to write 4 solid paragraphs on the Kansas school board. Consequently, I have cut all that obvious stuff. I'll sum up those four deleted paragraphs with a simple comparison: the Kansas Schoolboard members are like a bunch of turkeys.Wait a minute. Isn't there a word for a bunch of turkeys? I should be more specific. A gaggle? A flock? I finally had to look it up. A bunch of turkeys isn't a bunch after all, it is a rafter! So I should have said "The kansas Schoolboard is like a rafter of turkeys." That would be proper, but somehow it is not fitting. For starters it is an insult to the turkeys. And it doesn't quite strike to the core of what I want to say. I'll get to that soon, but first I would like to list off some of the entertaining names that have been given to different groups of animals:
- A clutter of cats
- A murder of crows
- A whoop of gorillas
- A smack of jellyfish
- A exaltation of larks
- A cartload of monkeys
- A crash of rhinoceros
- A mutation of thrushes
- A bike of wasps
They are all so fitting, and satisfying. Hmm, they don't have a name for a group of schoolboard members, how about a turdhill? Yes. That sounds right. Now I can really say what I meant. "A group of Kansas Schoolboard members is a turdhill, not a rafter of turkeys." That works! Here are some other names for groupings of people that I came up with:
- A turdhill of schoolboard members
- A dumpster of politicians
- A tiptoe of librarians
- A fishbelly of programmers
- A squeeze of prostitutes
- A sixpack of frat boys (when there are six)
- A granola of environmentalists
- A slab of football players
- A meander of hitchhikers
- A tear of poets
- A teabag of male strippers
- A hoodwink of presidents
- A hullabaloo of Italians
- A periwinkle of grandmothers
- A kitsch of screenwriters
- A forest of basketball players
- A clearcut of jockeys
I hope you find them useful in your day to day life. Let me know if I have missed anything.
6 comments:
a nose of scholars
a breeze of buddhists
a fortress of feminists
a beat of hipsters
a burn of lawyers
a marble of gypsies
a cackle of Kathys
a shy of hermits
a hellion of teenagers
an onion of vagabonds
a tiff of exes
a ladle of volunteers
a fever of artists
yes, this is fun.
You have to explain the marble of gypsies to me. I've added this idea of collective names for groups of humans to the halfbakery in hopes of getting more suggestions. http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Collective_20Terms_20for_20Humans
Ok, my idea got marked for deletion at halfbakery. Searching for collaborators at http://bbs.oedilf.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=929
I just wanted to use the word marble. Somehow I thought gypsies sounded appropriate at the time. It seems to conjure up images of crystal balls, marbles as currency, (not to mention someone who has lost their marbles) okay, so it was a stretch. I was going for a sort-of storybook version of the gypsy. But scratch that, I have a more satisfying collective noun for a rhyme of marble:
a warble of quakers
p.s. I really like an ejaculation of seamen.
Looks like there has been plenty written on this topic. Amazon lets you read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0140170960/ref=sib_rdr_fc/103-4374925-7156646?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S001&j=0#reader-page">the first few pages</a> of the book "An Exaltation of Larks" by James Lipton. Lipton writes with a pompasity that few can match, enjoy.
Here are some links I have been directed to on this topic. Looks like there are far more collective nouns for people and groups of people than I first suspected. Gosh I'm learning alot! http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/article011.html, http://www.cbi.pku.edu.cn/Docbak/Embnetut/Personal/venereal.html.
PS. I went to the library to look at the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1559211415/qid=1130163603/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-0383427-9075058?v=glance&s=books&n=507846" rel="nofollow"> "A crash of rhinoceros"</a> It is fun to browse through and although I have read neither James Lipton's book on collective nouns or this book, both look to be about the same thing. When I do finally get around to reading one of these I'll probably read the crash of rhinos because I have seen the actor's studio and I find Lipton to be much too pompous.
Post a Comment