If you like collective nouns you can thank Dame Juliana Berners, a noble-born lady turned nun, who published her thoughts on hunting in The Book of Saint Albans in 1486. The book was about the hobbies of gentlemen of the time: hunting, hawking (now more commonly called falconry), and heraldry. After the Berner’s hunting chapter there is an appendix with 165 collective nouns for animals commonly encountered while hunting, and humorous collective nouns for people, such as a blast of hunters and a melody of harpists. Interestingly, this is also one of the earliest known works written by a woman in the English language.
This book sparked a tradition of unique collective nouns that has persisted into the modern age. Clearly, some of the collective nouns originally published in 1486 were created as jokes, and not commonly used in everyday speech. However, as the book gained popularity, readers enjoyed these strange phrases so much that they began using and expanding on the list, inventing names for groups of all sorts of animals. Many of the collective nouns we still have around today come from the original book or shortly thereafter.
Here are some of our favorites.
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