"Did you know a group of crows is called a murder?" I must have heard this factoid twenty times before I finally asked: "Wait โ why? Who decided that? And does anyone use 'murder' outside of pub trivia nights?" The answer took me down a rabbit hole involving a 15th-century noblewoman, a hunting manual, and what might be the longest-running linguistic joke in English history.
The Book of Saint Albans
In 1486, a book called The Book of Saint Albans (also known as The Boke of Seynt Albans) was published in England. It was a gentleman's handbook covering three essential topics for any self-respecting 15th-century nobleman: hawking (hunting with birds of prey), hunting (with dogs), and heraldry (coats of arms and family crests). The book is often attributed to Dame Juliana Berners, the prioress of the Sopwell Priory near St Albans โ which would make her one of the first female authors published in English, though the attribution is not certain. What is certain is that the book contained a list of "terms of venery" โ collective nouns for groups of animals โ and that list has been delighting and confusing English speakers for 535 years.
The book listed about 165 collective nouns. Many of them were practical โ a "herd" of deer, a "flock" of sheep โ but a substantial number were wildly creative in a way that suggests the author was having a lot of fun. A "murder" of crows. A "parliament" of owls. A "skulk" of foxes. An "unkindness" of ravens. A "business" of ferrets. A "gaggle" of geese (when on the ground โ when in flight, they're a "skein," which is the kind of specificity you only get when someone really cares about geese).
These weren't scientific terms. They weren't folk traditions passed down through generations. They were โ and this is the key insight โ invented. The author (or authors) of the Book of Saint Albans was engaged in a creative writing exercise. The terms were meant to be witty, clever, and entertaining โ a way for gentlemen to demonstrate their education and sophistication at hunting parties. Knowing that it's a "parliament" of owls (because owls look wise and thoughtful, like members of Parliament โ the joke being that actual parliaments are often anything but) was a social signal. You were in on the joke.
The Ones That Actually Get Used
Let's be honest: almost nobody uses most of these terms in everyday speech. If you saw a group of foxes and said "Look, a skulk of foxes!", people would think you were having a stroke. A handful of the terms have actually entered common usage: a "pride" of lions (from the same tradition, though it's so common now we don't think of it as quirky), a "school" of fish, a "pack" of wolves, a "herd" of cattle, a "flock" of birds, a "swarm" of bees, a "colony" of ants. These are the survivors โ the collective nouns that evolved from poetic invention into practical vocabulary. They won the linguistic Darwin Award. The rest โ "cete" of badgers, "sounder" of pigs, "drift" of swans โ are museum pieces, kept alive by listicles and trivia competitions.
Modern Coinings โ The Tradition Lives On
The tradition of inventing poetic collective nouns never really died. Modern additions include a "flamboyance" of flamingos (coined by someone who had clearly seen flamingos), a "crash" of rhinoceroses (accurate), a "tower" of giraffes (also accurate), a "cackle" of hyenas (the sound is unmistakable), and a "bloat" of hippopotamuses (somewhat unfair to hippos, who are mostly muscle, not bloat). These modern coinings follow the exact same principle as the 1486 originals: they're witty observations dressed up as taxonomic categories.
Some of the newer coinings venture into territory the 15th-century authors never imagined. A "shoal" of programmers is a 21st-century invention. A "pile" of UX designers. A "widget" of interface elements. These are niche jokes for specific professional communities, but they're the direct descendants of what the Book of Saint Albans started โ the idea that collective nouns don't have to be boring and that language can be a playground as much as a tool.
Why Did This Catch On?
I think the collective noun tradition survived for 500 years because it satisfies a deep human desire to name things in clever ways. Giving a group of crows a name like "murder" transforms a mundane observation (there are some crows over there) into a tiny poem. The name itself tells a story โ crows are scavengers associated with death and battlefields, so a group of them is a murder. Owls look like they're having a serious committee meeting, so they're a parliament. The names are miniature acts of literary criticism applied to the natural world.
If you want to coin your own collective noun โ and I highly encourage this โ the formula is simple: observe the animal's most distinctive behavior, appearance, or cultural association, and give it a name that captures that essence. A "scroll" of internet users. A "splash" of otters. A "procrastination" of students. The Book of Saint Albans established the template; we've been filling in new entries for five centuries. The only rule is that the name should make someone smile when they hear it for the first time.