If Only I had a fluffle…

When we were in grade school, English wasn’t very often a titillating experience unless we learned preposterous words to make us giggle.  The concept of a fluffle of bunnies and a gaggle of geese is not only good for getting a smile going, but you could also win some non-serious trivia competitions. 

Collective nouns are linguistic constructs describing a group of people, animals, objects, or things as unified entities.  Plurals are singular! These nouns serve as shortcuts in communication, allowing us to convey complex ideas succinctly.  Encapsulating the unity and shared purpose of the collection can conjure vivid imagery and a sense of cohesion. 

On top of that cool grammar stuff, some just sound silly!  An embarrassment of pandas, a prickle of porcupines, a mischief of mice, a kindle of kittens, and a clowder of cats.  The kindle of kittens is different than a litter, the former is a bunch of unrelated fluffballs, while the latter is a bunch of siblings. 

A flamboyance of flamingos, a parliament of owls, and an ostentation of peacocks is befitting the bird kingdom.  The regular old flock of birds isn’t interesting on its own so much as the idiom birds of a feather flock together has multiple plays on words once we start seeing the collective nouns.

For the animals found on safari, there are a zeal of zebras, a bloat of hippopotamuses, a coalition of cheetahs, and a tower of giraffes.  A crash of rhinoceroses and a cackle of hyenas are the respective collective nouns and not a description of how you expect them to sound. 

For us boring humans, we use everyone, everybody, no one, and nobody to collect us.  Please note that these collective nouns are always singular. 

As for objects and things, we have a constellation of stars, a bunch of bananas, a quiver of arrows, and a clutter of keys.  And while these are commonly accepted, what if we got creative?  A wisdom of wombats is real, but what if we had a rainbow of crayons, a galaxy of glitter, and a jumble of jigsaw pieces?