May 31, 2009
Dear Clusterflock: Collective nouns
Do you have favourites? Not necessarily words you use, but words you like just because?
I have always liked an abominable sight of monks and the complementary superfluity of nuns.
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I’m thinking I’d like to make up some such.
Clusterflock is good.
These can be your own collective nouns, they really don’t need to be recognised ones.
I like the old standby: a murder of crows.
My Tennessee relatives made up words, phrases. Uncle Elijah would give me a dime to ask my mother and aunts if they knew how to spell “combultious,” for instance. That’s a combination of combustible, compulsive and bumptious. All children were combultious, of course.
Somber Uncle Nesbitt would announce that he dearly loved the dessert Pie Outta The Commode. And stifled a smile as the church ladies looked on horrified while he enjoyed it.
Cece! Pie Outta the Commode! Oh, lor’ — that it is — what? That which precedes praying to the porcelain god — or laughing at the carpet?
This is not a collective noun, but apparently I once invented this dessert name: Apple Grunt.
As for made-up collective nouns, how about “a flick of boogers”?
Apple Grunt. Cooper, is that not an unreleased George Harrison tune, circa 1970?
You most certainly did not invent that name, Cooper. It is a well known old-timey dessert, often attributed to the Amish.
That proves it, Coop–reincarnation.
Really, India? Cool. I had no idea. That may explain why I thought someone else invented it, but I was told I did. . .
A flick of boogers. Ah, Cooper. That is the poet in you.
A parliament of owls. Or an unkindness of ravens.