{"id":14615,"date":"2014-05-23T10:09:10","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T09:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=14615"},"modified":"2014-05-23T10:09:10","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T09:09:10","slug":"the-strangeness-of-the-english-language-when-it-comes-to-collective-nouns-for-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=14615","title":{"rendered":"The strangeness of the English language when it comes to collective nouns for animals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>English is a funny language &#8211; as my Italian mother used to remark often. Perhaps nowhere is it stranger than when it comes to collective nouns, especially for animals (and most particularly for birds), many of which go back to the Late Middle Ages.<\/p>\n<p>Some of my favourites are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a congregation of alligators<\/li>\n<li>a shrewdness of apes<\/li>\n<li>a sleuth of bears<\/li>\n<li>a flutter of butterflies<\/li>\n<li>a chattering of choughs<\/li>\n<li>a murder of crows<\/li>\n<li>a convocation of eagles<\/li>\n<li>a charm of finches<\/li>\n<li>a kettle of hawks<\/li>\n<li>a cackle of hyenas<\/li>\n<li>a bevy of larks<\/li>\n<li>a scourge of mosquitoes<\/li>\n<li>a watch of nightingales<\/li>\n<li>a parliament of owls<\/li>\n<li>a bouquet of pheasants<\/li>\n<li>an unkindness of ravens<\/li>\n<li>a crash of\u00a0rhinoceroses<\/li>\n<li>an ambush of tigers<\/li>\n<li>a descent of woodpeckers<\/li>\n<li>a dazzle of zebras<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Further information <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_collective_nouns_in_English\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>English is a funny language &#8211; as my Italian mother used to remark often. Perhaps nowhere is it stranger than when it comes to collective nouns, especially for animals (and most particularly for birds), many of which go back to the Late Middle Ages. Some of my favourites are: a congregation of alligators a shrewdness [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14615"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14638,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14615\/revisions\/14638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}