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Encyclopedia > Collective nouns sorted by subject

Collective noun
List of collective nouns

Notes:
The phrase "An abomination of monks" is frequently cited as a legitimate collective noun for monks. It is actually a misinterpretation of the title of a protestant treatise written by Jan Hus around 1400.


An "anthology of prostitutes" is a pun on "anthology of prose", as "pro" is a common contraction for prostitute in Britain and elsewhere.


The phrase "A court of kangaroos" is frequently thought to be legitimate, given the (quite unrelated) expression "a kangaroo court". There is no known evidence of its legitimacy as a collective noun, however.


A "ream of paper" - A ream is traditionally defined as 480 sheets (twenty quires of twenty-four sheets each); the more usual modern count is 500 sheets to the ream. This is more a measure of paper than a collective noun, however.




  Results from FactBites:
 
English collective nouns - Wikivisual (836 words)
Most collective nouns encountered in everyday speech (such as "group") are mundane and are not specific to one kind of constituent object (for example, the uses "group of people", "group of dogs", and "group of ideas" are all correct uses).
The tradition of using collective nouns that are specific to certain kinds of animals stems from an English hunting tradition, dating back to at least the 15th century, in which poetic names were given to specific kinds of prey ("venery" means the hunting of animals).
For this reason, there are many collective nouns that refer to animals and many of these original collective nouns are archaic: a "harras of horses" seems to have been used little since the 1400s.
  More results at FactBites »

 

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