Welcome to brain stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, have you ever heard of a group of ferrets called a business of ferrets? Or a collection of jellyfish referred to as a smack of jellyfish? What about a shrewdness of apes? We use collective nouns, also known as nouns of assemblage to describe all sorts of groups.
Hosts of angels, bands of men, and shocks of corn are commonly heard these days, but the nouns associated with particular groupings of animals can get weird fast because words and their uses are invented by people. When we see a bunch of a specific construction, you can bet on it being the result of a language fad, And sure enough, five hundred years ago, nouns of assemblage were all the rage.
We spoke via email with Magdalene Jacobs, a pH d candidate in the Vanderbilt University Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences. She said, these are generally terms that came about from upper class hunting culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They're called terms of venery, and they're linked to Norman culture and influence and the idea of proper hunting language.
Over a hundred and sixty terms of venery are listed in the Book of St Alban's, a wildly popular at the time manner's guide published in fourteen eighty six that coached the medieval gentleman through having conversations about hunting, falconry, fishing, sports, and heraldry without embarrassing himself at dinner parties. These collective nouns are found in a chapter entitled the Companies of Beasts and Fowls, though some of the terms referred to
people rather than animals. A bit of a joke, the Book of Saint Alban's not only described as sleuth of bears and a skulk of foxes, but also linked women to geese in the collective consciousness by labeling collections of both gaggles. According to Jacobs, this is partially because there is a direct linguistic link from the word gaggle to the Middle English word for cackle. A collection of wives was labeled and impatience a group of writers, on the
other hand, was called a ship. If language tells us how to think about the world, we can see the fifteenth century European gentlemen's social priorities, though, of course, because you can't keep the kids from making up slang. Once the construction was introduced in the Book of St Alban's, people started coining their own nouns of assemblage. Although a lot of these terms slipped into obscurity in the sixteenth century, like much of the lingo we generate on a continual basis,
some of them were adopted into common speech. These days. We don't often have occasion to talk about a sneer of butlers or a misbelief of portrait painters, But whoever came up with a staff of employees, a congregation of churchgoers, or a panel of judges should congratulate themselves on a job well done. Linguistically speaking, much of the time, the correct term for a group of anything lets us know our collective views on the disposition of whatever we're naming.
Some of the most evocative terms of venery can be found in birds the Book of St Alban's lists and unkindness of ravens and a murder of crows definitely creepy negatives, but a charm of finches adorable. Whoever first referred to a college of cardinals was probably suggesting they thought the group of little red birds looked like a meeting of academics. But why a group of storks is called a mustering
is a little less clear. C. S. Lewis coined the term parliament of owls in his children's book series The Chronicles of Narnia, a nod to Chaucer's poem A Parliament of Fowls. The term is now recognized in dictionaries as being the correct term for a group of owls. There are meanwhile, few nouns of assemblage for insects mentioned in the Book of Saint Albans. We still refer to a swarm of bees, which was recorded in the book, but we don't talk as much about a business of flies
or a flock of lice. If you've ever heard of a kindle of kittens, that comes from the Middle English word kindle in which meant to give birth or produce a litter, which was originally used only for puppies, but is now commonly used for all kinds baby animals. A group of adult cats might be a glaring or a pounce, but a crowd of feral hats is a destruction. Anyone concerned about the decline of migrating songbirds can understand why
that might be. Dogs, which were as much a man's best friend in the Middle Ages as today, got a lot of play. In the Book of Saint Alban's, hunting hounds alone got several group titles a cry, a mute, a pack, and a kennel. Some of the most inventive terms of venery are applied to wild animals, and Jacob said because they began as hunting terms. The original names from the Book of Saint Alban's reflected a specific societal disposition towards the animal being hunted. A pride of lions
is a good example. Others that came later, such as a wisdom of wombats, may be inaccurate, as wombats are rather solitary and don't spend time in groups. Others likely referred to qualities of the animals themselves. A business of ferrets came from a business of ferrets, which makes more sense than business if you've spent any time at all watching ferrets. These days, folks continue to make up new
nouns of assemblage and bring back old ones. Thus we can talk about a prickle of hedgehogs, an obstinacy of Buffalo, a bloat of hippos, and a game of whales regardless of whether we're planning on hunting them or not. Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by Tyler Clang for iHeart Media and how Stuff Works. For more on this and a wonder of other topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.