The Coordinated Origins of Collective Nouns
The elegantly loquacious linguist Rob Watts of RobWords looks at the origins of highly descriptive collective nouns within the English language, specifically how such disparate words were used to describe a group of the same thing. Examples include a gaggle of geese, a murder of crows, a school of fish, a pride of lions, a murmuration of starlings, and a skulk of foxes.
English has all kinds of silly and strange words for when a load of one thing hang out with one another. …These collective nouns, as they’re known, raise many questions. Like what’s so murderous about a murder of crows? How can a school of fish be a school? And where on earth did all these come from?
Lori Dorn
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