What’s in a noun?
Recently I received this in my inbox, source unknown. Now, I am not going to put up all kinds of office-humour mails here (I do that in dutch at zegdanwat.nl). However, I do enjoy the intricasies of languages; hence this post.
The English language has some wonderfully anthropomorphic collective nouns for the various groups of animals.
We are all familiar with:
a Herd of cows
a Flock of chickens
a School of fish
a Gaggle of geese.
However, less widely known is:
a Pride of lions
a Murder of crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens)
an Exaltation of doves (Larks too)
a Parliament of owls
Now consider a group of Baboons. They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least intelligent of all primates.
And what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons?
Believe it or not …….it is a Congress!
I guess that pretty much explains the things!
