11 June 2008

Collective Nouns (updated)

I owe this post to Annette, whose story of Panda's and their collective name a pandemonium of Pandas sparked an idea in my mind.

When I was at school, a few years ago than I care to remember, we used to have a test on collective nouns seemingly every week, but then again my memory might be failing.

The Questions would be to fill in the missing gap
  • A ............. of sheep (Flock)
  • A herd of ........... (Cows)
  • A ............. of bees (Swarm)
  • A Pack of .......... (Dogs)
etc.. I enjoyed it at the time, I love challenges like this on words. So here's mine for you to test yourself on, knock yourselves out people - sadly there are no prizes for the right answer but it will be interesting to read your comments.

  1. A Murder of ....Crows...............
  2. A ....Gang......... of Elk
  3. A String of ....Racehorses.....................
  4. A Mob of ......Kangaroos.............
  5. A ....drift ..........of Hogs
  6. A Leap of .....Leopards.....................
  7. A ....Richness ........... of Martens
  8. A Bevy of ..Otters.......................
  9. A ....Span........... of Oxen
  10. A ....Crash.......... of Rhinocerouses
  11. An ...Ambush.......... of Tigers
  12. A Marvel of ...Unicorns..................
Update - have now put the right answers in.. go to the top of the class if you got 8 or more right.. collect the cheats card if you got all 12 as you probably looked them up on the internet.. I know I did ;-)

All are mammals (this time).... maybe my next one will be a different species.

7 comments:

Annette said...

WOW, I was just going to do a post about this myself.
I have a list of collective nouns off the computer. I was going to print them.You beat me to it!!!
xxx

Annette said...

I think I've got some of them:
1. crows
2. ?
3. ponies
4. people,animals,kangeroos
5. passel
6. hares
7. richness
8. ?
9. span
10. ?
11. ?
12. ?

Got these from my list!!

Annette said...

ahhh,
11. streak

(hehe)

Sage said...

I am enjoying this - thanks Annette for giving me the idea as well, perhaps you could do the one on birds or something else?

Sage

Annette said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sage said...

I have only found 2 Annette - to your question.

1) a camp
2) a languid languish

and these were the politer ones :-)

xx

Sage

[jimiffondu] said...

1. Innocents
2. Convent
3. Sausages
4. Italians
5. Hooters Bar [of]
6. Faith healers
7. House
8. Beers
9. Barbershop
10. Stadium
11. Ann Summers' night
12. Ingenuity