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  collective nouns

I was talking to Danielle this morning and somehow we started talking about monkeys. It made me wonder what word is used to describe a group of monkeys. I knew a few other words for groups of nouns, like "a pod of whales," or "a gaggle of geese," or "a pride of lions," but I didn't know one for monkeys. So I asked Google, and I found a great list of hundreds of them. Some of my favorites are:

  • a congregation of crocodiles
  • an ostentation of peacocks
  • a knot of toads
  • a shrewdness of apes
  • a singular of boars (I don't get this one)
  • a clutter of cats
  • a business of ferrets
  • a tower of giraffes
  • a prickle of hedgehogs
  • a mob of kangaroos
  • an ambush of tigers
  • a sneak of weasels
  • a zeal of zebras
  • a grist of bees
  • an implausibility of gnus
  • a waddle of penguins
  • a bloat of hippopotami
  • a crash of rhinoceri
And that's only animals. There are collective nouns for people too.
  • a tabernacle of bakers
  • a draught of butlers
  • an exaggeration of fishermen
  • a poverty of pipers
  • a superfluity of nuns
To get back to my original question, monkeys can come as:
  • a cartload of monkeys
  • a tribe of monkeys
  • a troop of monkeys
  • a troupe of monkeys
Now you know.

Posted by neal on Apr 4, 2006 at 02:04 PM | Comments (2)