Words Wednesday: Collective Nouns For Animals Part II

cheetah

Today we conclude our two-part adventure into collective nouns as we look at some more ways to describe groups of animals and birds.

This batch of 25 collective nouns has been chosen to stir the imagination and it amazing how really appropriate most of the collective nouns actually seem to be for the groups of animals they describe while others are more obscure.

For example it is easy to see why we have a prickle of hedgehogs – they are, after all, rather prickly creatures. However I find a troubling of goldfish to be rather odd. What could possibly be troubling about goldfish?

As with last week’s collection it is possible to have more than one collective noun to describe the same group of objects – such as for goldfish below.

So here are today’s words:

woodpecker

a coalition of cheetahs
a congregation of plovers
a convocation of eagles
a cowardice of curs
a descent of woodpeckers

a destruction of wildcats
an escargatoire of snails
an exaltation of larks
a gaggle of geese
a glint of goldfish

troubling?...goldfish

a troubling of goldfish
an implausibility of gnus
a kaleidoscope of butterflies
a prickle of hedgehogs or porcupines
a rumba of rattlesnakes

a shrewdness of apes
a skulk of foxes
a sloth of bears
a sneak of weasels
a surfeit of skunks

butterfly

an ugly of walruses
an unkindness of ravens
a whoop of gorillas
a wilderness of monkeys
a zeal of zebras

* All words in this blog post have been supplied by The 12^th edition of The Chambers Dictionary. ISBN 97805501002379

Tagged as: Chambers Dictionary, Words Wednesday