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Saturday, January 2, 2016

ANTHROPOMORPHIC



The English language has some wonderfully anthropomorphic collective nouns for the various groups of animals.

There are the familiar ones: a HERD of cows, a FLOCK of chickens, a SCHOOL of fish, a GAGGLE of geese and a PRIDE of lions;  however, a MURDER of crows (and their cousins the ravens and rooks), an EXALTATION of doves, and presumably, because they look wise, a PARLIAMENT of owls,  are more unusual terms.

Now, consider a group of BABOONS: they are the loudest, most aggressive, most obnoxious, most dangerous, most viciously aggressive, and least intelligent of all Primates, yet, what do you think is the collective name for a group of baboons?

Yes, it's a CONGRESS, and yes, I frequently refer to our national legislative body as 

THE DO-NOTHING CONGRESS!

To see 10 Peculiar Collective Nouns,
Click Here.

To see Odd Names For Animals, Click Here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes, I looked in the dictionary and there was your picture! ML