I am curious about the words we use to describe various groups of animals. A group of lions is called a pride of lions; a group of owls is called a congress of owls; a group of fish is called a school of fish; a group of crows is called a murder of crows; and a group of baboons is called a parliament of baboons.
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How did these common words that we use in everyday speech in entirely different contexts come to denote groups of animals?
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-Sanjeev
Sanjeev, most of them were consciously invented in a creative spirit. They're poetic and inventive but factitious. Few of them are used outside of discussions of collective nouns. They're showy and stunt-like and not very practical or widely used. "School of fish" and "pride of lions" are on that very short list of ones that are widely known and used. "Parliament of baboons," "murder of crows," and "congress of owls" are not.
I'm aware that some writers have used the collective nouns in everyday writing, but those uses have the same air about them as dictionary-diving and thesaurus-plundering, which are when one uses words one found in those reference works, words that one does not understand and that are not really right for the job.
Using them is kind of like calling milk "moo juice."
Grant expressed my thoughts perfectly on this.
But if these terms, or at the very least the one in the header of this thread, didn't exist, nobody would ever have made this joke:
