Van from Washington, D.C., is curious about the word fluffle, which supposedly denotes “a group of bunnies.” A friend of hers claimed to have coined this collective noun for lagomorphs along with friends at the University of Alberta in Canada some 10 to 15 years ago and inserted it into Wikipedia on a lark. Could that be true? Linguist Ben Zimmer researched this question, and reported his findings to the listserv of the American Dialect Society. Fluffle indeed appears to have been added to the online encyclopedia in July 2007, where it was defined as “a group of rabbits or hares is called a fluffle in parts of Northern Canada.” So it’s possible that her friend’s story is true. At this point, at least, there’s no evidence to the contrary. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Who Coined the Word “Fluffle” to Refer to a Group of Rabbits?”
Hey there, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha. This is Van from Washington, D.C.
Well, hello, Van. Welcome to the show. What’s up?
Well, I have a story about a word, but to tell that story, I have to give you a compliment first.
So my mother was absolutely a fan of your show, but unfortunately, she did pass away this fall.
And I was having a conversation with my friend after her celebration of life ceremony about how my mom was a huge collector of rabbit figurines.
And so it was, you know, with great delight that my friend said, oh, you mean your mother had a fluffle of bunnies? F-L-U-F-F-L-E.
And I was like, what is a fluffle?
And my friend said, well, this word is now taking Instagram by storm. It’s across the Internet.
But as a young college student, me and a bunch of my physics classmates made this word up as a joke.
And in the early days of the Internet, they posted this on Wikipedia.
And now this word has been used and cited in veterinary pages on, like I said, on Instagram, people are adding it to their books of delight.
And, you know, I would just say my mom would be one, thrilled about this word, and then two, doubly thrilled that I get to talk to you about this.
And my question is, one, fact-checking my friend. It seems to be a word that is used rather frequently across the Internet.
And I just couldn’t believe that she and a group of friends just making up this word was actually true.
So I wouldn’t see if there’s some veracity in what she said.
And then two, this feels a little weird that this is, you know, what I would think would be a more scientific word, you know, talking about a biology, you know, phenomena, you know, a group of rabbits and sluffle just comes up into existence.
So I wanted to get your thoughts and insights on sluffle.
To be clear, it wasn’t you, Van. It was your friend and your friends who put the word on Wikipedia.
Yes, that is what she is claiming.
Gotcha. And you said the early days of the Internet, but it wasn’t that early, right?
I guess it’s maybe 10, 15 years ago at this point.
Yeah, that’s about right. By pure coincidence, our colleague Ben Zimmer, who is a fantastic linguist, and the Wall Street Journal’s language columnist did some digging on this very term in 2023.
And he has a great post to the email list of the American Dialect Society, where he shows that it was first added in July of 2007 by a Wikipedia user going by the handle FreeWriter.
FreeWriter, one word, no E at the end.
And it says there, this is how it was first added to Wikipedia. A group of rabbits or hares are often called a fluffle in parts of northern Canada.
And over the years, he tracks this word fluffle. He shows it being borrowed into not very respectable reference works.
He shows it being deleted in 2010 because somebody says, I can’t verify this.
And then it shows up on Reddit in 2013. And somebody says, what’s a fact you know that will cheer me up?
And somebody says a group of bunnies is called a fluffle.
And it just keeps coming up in thought catalog articles and BuzzFeed articles.
Then we get to February of 2023 when it’s added to Wiktionary.
So the trajectory of this word from that first moment when it appeared on Wikipedia to now is really interesting.
And as you say, it’s all over social media because people just kind of steal memes from each other.
I guess that’s the nature of memes.
Plus it does make your day, right?
Yeah, but what’s interesting is… Fluffle is a collective noun for rabbits or bunnies, as far as I can tell, did not exist before that Wikipedia entry.
So if your friend was one of those people, then your friend is correct.
They did launch the word fluffle into the universe.
Well, that’s wonderful.
It sounds correct because they were at the University of Alberta at the time.
So I think that matches what they’re claiming.
That Northern Canada part?
Mm-Absolutely.
There’s a couple other notions that we should get into here.
One, fluffle is kind of in a weird limbo where it looks like it could be successful, but it needs more use by lots of other people across all kinds of media before it can really become permanently entrenched in English.
So it’s not fully fledged, so to speak.
This bunny hasn’t grown up completely.
But another facet of it, which is, this is where I throw a wet blanket on things, is these kinds of collective nouns for animals tend to mostly be showpiece words that people talk about but don’t use except in ostentatious, look at me ways.
They’re kind of like an antique car that you have, but you never drive.
You talk about it, but you never drive it.
You know, it’s just not necessarily ever going to be picked up in scientific texts without a giggle or a footnote, you know.
Talk to us in 20 or 30 years. We’ll see where it is.
Okay.
That sounds great.
Thank you, Van.
We appreciate your call.
Yeah.
And thanks for sharing the memories of your mother.
Those were really lovely.
That sounded really sweet.
And I’m glad that she appreciated the show because it sounds like she received exactly what we were sending.
Oh, yes.
She would be delighted, and thank you so much for taking this call.
She would, yeah, really remember this well.
Thank you.
All right.
Take care of yourself.
Take care, Vin.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
