Tuesday, October 21, 2008

All together now!

by Anna Sugden

One of my favourite English lessons as a teacher (no groaning!) was Collective Nouns. You know - the name for a group of things:

A pod of dolphins
A tower of giraffes
A prickle of hedgehogs
A leap of leopards
A mob of kangaroos
A company of moles
A crash of rhinos
A harem of seals
An ambush of tigers
A sneak of weasels

It was such fun seeing how children's minds worked as they came up with their own examples. Could they more innovative than:

A murder of crows
A cast of falcons
A chattering of goldfinches
A twittering of magpies
An exultation of larks
A convocation of eagles
A match of nightingales
A parliament of owls
An army of caterpillars

If you Google collective nouns, you can pass an entertaining few minutes seeing what others have come up with - and not just for animals and birds. These sites had some really funny ones.

http://www.ojohaven.com/collectives/

http://www.guy-sports.com/months/jokes_collective_nouns.htm

So, for a little Wednesday fun, I thought we could come up with some collective nouns of our own. What would you call a group of:
golden roosters
Banditas
BBs
cabana boys/hockey hunks/gladiators/cowboys/dukes
romance heroes
romance heroines
romance authors
romance readers
romance novels
nasty villains


And I'm offering a prize. Real English Cadbury's chocolate for the best/funniest/most creative answers.

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