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Heaven: 2021 Proof Americans and Brits speak a different language

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  • NicoleMRNicoleMR Shipmate
    I would. Again, what else would you say? Aside from specifically "three cows", which seems unnecessarily specific.
  • NicoleMR wrote: »
    I would. Again, what else would you say? Aside from specifically "three cows", which seems unnecessarily specific.

    "Some cows."
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    The arena at Cirencester had a shrine to Nemesis.
  • NicoleMR wrote: »
    I would.

    Fair enough. I'm surprised. I'd agree with mousethief - that's "some cows", which is different from "a herd of cows". All of the cows in the field might form a herd; the three under the tree are just some cows.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    On those collective terms, I agree that a lot of them are poetic fantasies, the preserve of pub quizzes. The ones I can think of that I'd say are in genuine use, including some not on the list, are,

    charm - goldfinches (doubtful),
    covey - game birds,
    farrow - litter of piglets,
    flock - sheep, birds,
    flight - game birds in the air together,
    gaggle - geese, but only on the ground and more often used metaphorically of humans,
    herd - cattle, deer and mammals generally, also swans on the ground but not in the air,
    litter - puppies, kittens, piglets, baby mice, etc
    murmuration - starlings but it's a specific behaviour when they gather to roost,
    pack - hounds, wolves, other canids, also lies,
    pod - cetaceans generally,
    pride - lions,
    raft - waterbirds in a flock on the water,
    school - porpoises, dolphins,
    shoal - fish,
    skein - geese in flight,
    swarm - bees,
    team - oxen, when more than two, usually eight,
    train - mules,
    troop - monkeys,
    yoke - oxen, but only as a pair.

    A drey (sic) isn't in our usage a collection of squirrels so much as the nest a squirrel makes in a tree. And a caravan isn't so much a collection of camels as the entire equipage of the travelling merchant in the desert, which probably includes camels.

    I've never heard of a cete of badgers, but the holes they dig and live in are called setts.


    On Nemesis, as a BrEnglish speaker, I would definitely agree with @Robert Armin. Using it to mean a villain generally would strike me as misleading, a metaphor which has taken leave of its foundation.

  • SparrowSparrow Shipmate
    My parents used to have an old reference book, some sort of English usage and grammar primer, that had lists of all those collective nouns. But I've never heard most of them used in real life.
  • MarthaMartha Shipmate
    My boys learned some of them in school - I was never quite sure if it was just for fun, or whether their teachers actually expected the kids to need to know them.
  • I'd describe a group of badgers as a sett of badgers, but you normally only see a group near their sett.

    One that's not on the list is a rookery for a group of rooks' nests, not that I've seen one for a while, the local one has disappeared, and possibly a parliament if I saw a group together on the ground. They do sound like parliament baying together.

    A murder of crows I'd use, but I've never seen one - crows are usually solitary.

    I would say herd - but having grown up in dairy country, it wasn't uncommon to arrive late for something saying, sorry got stuck behind Farmer X's herd as they were taken in for milking, without specifying cows.

    Yes, definitely to charm of goldfinches - they are if you see them together feeding on teasels link to a photo composite I took 18 months ago and it's a song on the Lost Words project, Spell Songs - YouTube link to Charm on Goldfinch. Jackie Morris, who is seen painting in that video, uses clowder about her cats, regularly.

    The other one I love because it's so descriptive is an exaltation or exultation of larks and the last few weeks, hearing larks over fields, that's so true.
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    Isn't Moriarty described as the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, and vice versa, in those books? Or did that come later?

    I'd be surprised, as Moriarty only appears in one story, where he gets killed. Contrary to later Holmes myth making, they are definitely not adversaries always poised in a perpetual way.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    NicoleMR wrote: »
    I would. Again, what else would you say? Aside from specifically "three cows", which seems unnecessarily specific.

    "Those cows over there", or "those cows in the bottom paddock". Perhaps "the 3 cows" if they're in a paddock with some steers or calves.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    One that's not on the list is a rookery for a group of rooks' nests, not that I've seen one for a while, the local one has disappeared, and possibly a parliament if I saw a group together on the ground. They do sound like parliament baying together.

    I thought it was a parliament of owls - very flattering to most human members of one.
  • PendragonPendragon Shipmate
    I think that term gets used of several of the 'cleverer' types of birds.

    I did once end up naming several members of a flock of sheep the Great Sheepscape in the context of their making me late for work 3 days running by repeatedly escaping onto a narrow country lane through a hole in the wire fence. Fortunately by day 4 the farmer had fixed it, although I'd taken the precaution of putting a large sheet of cardboard in the car to label the hole. (I was not risking my Micra on trying to find a way through a good half dozen adult sheep!)
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    I have to admit Bostonians have a dialect/language all their own.

    Some of their phrases:

    U-turn---Bang a Uey
    Dinner---Suppah
    Basement---Cellah
    TV Remote---Clickah
    Liquor Store---Packie
    Traffic Circle---Rotary
    Turn Signal---Blinkie
    Sprinkles--Jimmies
    Water Fountain---Bubblah
    No Way---No Suh
    Dunken [Donuts]---Dunkies
    State Trooper--Staties
    Very Awesome---Wicked Awesome
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    I agree that rookery is definitely a word that is in current use, but it's the colony of nests, not the group of rooks themselves. Theoretically, that's a parliament, but I've never heard anyone use that in ordinary speech.

    By analogy, 'rookery' is also used to describe some other colonies of birds, particularly sea birds. By further analogy it has been used to describe congested slums. The words gannetry is also used to describe a colony of gannets' nests, and of course heronry.

    Rooks and jackdaws flock. Crows and ravens don't normally, though the juveniles do and don't breed until they are 2-3 years old. They can collect in quite large numbers. Ravens particularly one often sees in pairs all year or at this time of the year in small family parties.

    Rooks aren't doing very well at the moment. A lot of rookeries are declining or being abandoned.

  • Can I lower the literary tone a notch or two, to say that when I hear 'Nemesis', the first thing that comes into my mind is the (excellent) ride at Alton Towers. (Suspended roller coaster, my favourite type.)
  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    'The Parliament of Foules (Fowls)' is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer. I had to study it at school.

    As I said earlier, I think some of these collective nouns are made up, not unlike some of the Cockney rhyming slang one sometimes hears used in banter. 'Brahms and Liszt' springs to mind.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    At the end of a night on the tiles? Never heard it used here.
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    NicoleMR wrote: »
    I've always said "a herd of deer", or else "a deer herd". Not sure what else you would call it...

    Well, my post did specify several other things people where I live called it, when I encountered them.
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    Apparently a group of unicorns is called a blessing. Which is a jolly useful thing to know!
  • finelinefineline Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Martha wrote: »
    My boys learned some of them in school - I was never quite sure if it was just for fun, or whether their teachers actually expected the kids to need to know them.

    Yes, that was my point - we learnt them in primary school. Actually we were given a random test to see if we knew them, having never actually being taught them, and then we were afterwards told which we got wrong and right. It was quite random - just one occasion when we learnt them like this. I don't generally come across people using them, or needing to use them, in adulthood, except in quizzes. Thinking about times I've been on retreat in Wales, for instance, where there are fields full of sheep, and fields full of cows. In casual conversation, in my observation, people don't tend to use even a common word like 'herd.' Normally the focus is simply on the fact that the animals are present in the field, so 'There are often (a lot of) cows in that field' is what people say. Not that people never say herd, but it doesn't seem to be a consistent norm, and it isn't generally considered wrong not to use it.

  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    Kangaroos: a troop or mob

    Most definitely mob.

  • Eirenist wrote: »
    As I said earlier, I think some of these collective nouns are made up, not unlike some of the Cockney rhyming slang one sometimes hears used in banter. 'Brahms and Liszt' springs to mind.
    That's one I've never encountered. Please explain?

  • Brahms and Liszt - pissed - so drunk

    a bit like Ruby Murray and some other Cockney-isms.
  • Pissed.
  • Nemesis is the purported companion star to the sun.

    I've heard that politicians and teenagers may come in "annoyances", though the former might be a crow-like "murder" oft times
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    I thought any collective of anything in Australia was a mob.
  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    Certainly a mob of sheep, I'm told.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Saw a film about an aboriginal policeman in which one of the elders in the town he was doing a sort of Bad Day at Black Rock episode told him that the local group was his mob. I wouldn't expect a white person would get away with that, though.
  • On 'bunch', I remember seeing the Pythons talking about flying over the Great Lakes with genius animator, Terry Gilliam who glanced out of the aeroplane window and exclaimed, 'There's a bunch of water down there ...'

    On Cockney rhyming slang, one of my scatalogical favourites is 'Richards' as in 'Richard the Thirds'.

    I don't think I've ever heard it in real life though. Like much Cockney rhyming slang come to think of it ...
  • Robert ArminRobert Armin Shipmate, Glory
    Nemesis is the purported companion star to the sun.

    Companion star to the sun? How have I missed this?
  • Alleged. Purported. Theoretical. Wouldn't-it-be-cool-if. Unlikely (sob).
  • Penny S wrote: »
    Saw a film about an aboriginal policeman in which one of the elders in the town he was doing a sort of Bad Day at Black Rock episode told him that the local group was his mob. I wouldn't expect a white person would get away with that, though.

    One of the iconic satirical novels from Australia is called They're a Weird Mob. Also filmed, it deals with an Italian migrant trying to cope with the Australian idiom.
  • Nick TamenNick Tamen Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    A murder of crows I'd use, but I've never seen one - crows are usually solitary.
    I’ve frequently seen murders of crows, including a few times in my front yard. I have to admit, when there are a bunch of them (see what I did there?), they do look rather ominous.

    Apparently a group of unicorns is called a blessing. Which is a jolly useful thing to know!
    I would think it should be a miracle of unicorns, or a hallucination. Though maybe a vision of unicorns sounds a little more poetic.

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    I wonder where the "troop" came from. Never heard it used, always a mob.
  • Place I used to work, about 25 miles north of here, at evening twilight, hundreds of crows swerve and swoop and land and take off again like starlings, cawing all the while. Very Hitchcock.
  • Troop of monkeys is common in our literature, it would come to mind - possibly Kipling? Barbar the Elephant, Gerald Durrell or other books of my childhood. I haven't heard it for kangaroos.

    @Nick Tamen we have a number of corvids here, commonly jackdaws and rooks are gregarious, crows are usually solitary. There's an old saw: if you see one rook it's almost certainly a crow, a number of crows they are rooks. Ravens, although found in colonies, are unlikely locally other than in the Tower of London. Choughs and Hooded Crows are found in Wales and Cornwall or Scotland, I'd see a gang of hoodies as a murder, with a rhotic r, rolled with relish. (One of the folk groups I like has a Scots singer and love their murder ballads.)

    Magpies are different again with a rhyme about numbers. This time of year, I see families of magpies: the local breeding pair raised four chicks last year. It's currently a bit quieter as they are only dealing with two noisy youngsters.

    Since the rookery disappeared a few years ago, jackdaws have been congregating in big groups and nest in all the nearby chimneys and some trees, but they don't feel as sinister as rooks or crows. I think it's the friendly way they communicate.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    I like rookeries. When I stayed with my grandparents, there was one at the foot of the garden, and the sound in the evening was soothing. I think rooks tend to go for grain rather than carrion - might be wrong - so less sinister.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    mousethief wrote: »
    Place I used to work, about 25 miles north of here, at evening twilight, hundreds of crows swerve and swoop and land and take off again like starlings, cawing all the while. Very Hitchcock.

    In my blurry-eyed, pre-caffeine morning state, I read that as 'cows'.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Cows do behave like that from time to time, a protest against milking conditions.
  • A point about ravens, they used to be scarce in most of England, but began to spread. For example, there is a pair nesting on the white cliffs of Dover. Also breeding in Suffolk for the first time since 1880.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Cavalry are in troops. One can talk about a troop of horse (sic) but they have people sitting on them.

    On corvids, Ravens are more widespread in the UK than they used to be but they do not nest in colonies. They have quite large territories which limits their numbers. A pair build a large nest on a cliff, in the top of a high tree or even on pylons. They've a particular liking for cedar trees. There's a Raven's nest a few miles from here in one which is now about 4' across. They're commoner on the west side of the country than the east.

    On mainland Britain, Hoodies are mostly north and west of the Great Glen. The crows in Wales are black ones, as they are in England and southern Scotland. The crows in Ireland and on the Isle of Man are usually Hoodies. Hoodies and Carrion Crows are different versions of the same species and hybridise.

    Rooks are good to have around. They don't eat grain so much as weevils, sheep parasites etc. Their caws have a slightly different timbre from crows.

    All the regular British corvids are fairly noisy. Rookeries are noisy. So are Jackdaws and Ravens have a particular distinctive sound, but I reckon Magpies are the noisiest.

    Bill Oddie has a maxim that if a non-birdwatcher tells you they've seen a mystery bird and asks you what it might be, once they describe it, it's almost always a Jay.

  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    Penny S wrote: »
    Saw a film about an aboriginal policeman in which one of the elders in the town he was doing a sort of Bad Day at Black Rock episode told him that the local group was his mob. I wouldn't expect a white person would get away with that, though.

    'Mob' is indeed very common for Indigenous people to refer to themselves. My guess is it wouldn't be particularly remarkable or offensive for a white person to use 'your mob' when talking to an Indigenous person... though that's a guess and might be context dependent.
  • @Nick Tamen we have a number of corvids here, commonly jackdaws and rooks are gregarious, crows are usually solitary. There's an old saw: if you see one rook it's almost certainly a crow, a number of crows they are rooks. Ravens, although found in colonies, are unlikely locally other than in the Tower of London. Choughs and Hooded Crows are found in Wales and Cornwall or Scotland, I'd see a gang of hoodies as a murder, with a rhotic r, rolled with relish. (One of the folk groups I like has a Scots singer and love their murder ballads.)
    The Wiki tells me that American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) are similar to yet distinct species from the carrion crow (Corvus corone) and the hooded crow (Corvus cornix) of Europe. Audubon says that "[American] crows are highly sociable and will hang out in murders and communal roosts." (The website All About Birds says that "American Crows congregate in large numbers in winter to sleep in communal roosts. These roosts can be of a few hundred up to two million crows," and that they "maintain[] a territory year round in which the entire extended family lives and forages together. But during much of the year, individual crows leave the home territory to join large flocks at dumps and agricultural fields.")

    Sorry for getting carried away. My son has always been fascinated with corvids, crows in particular, and so I've picked up lots of usually useless information over the years.

  • NicoleMRNicoleMR Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    I just feel like quoting this facebook meme I've seen:

    "It's Covid 19, not Corvid 19. Nineteen crows are not coming to kill you.
    And if they are, its a murder."
  • NicoleMR wrote: »
    I just feel like quoting this facebook meme I've seen:

    "It's Covid 19, not Corvid 19. Nineteen crows are not coming to kill you.
    And if they are, its a murder."

    I love that!
    :lol:
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    @Nick Tamen we have a number of corvids here, commonly jackdaws and rooks are gregarious, crows are usually solitary. There's an old saw: if you see one rook it's almost certainly a crow, a number of crows they are rooks. Ravens, although found in colonies, are unlikely locally other than in the Tower of London. Choughs and Hooded Crows are found in Wales and Cornwall or Scotland, I'd see a gang of hoodies as a murder, with a rhotic r, rolled with relish. (One of the folk groups I like has a Scots singer and love their murder ballads.)
    The Wiki tells me that American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) are similar to yet distinct species from the carrion crow (Corvus corone) and the hooded crow (Corvus cornix) of Europe. Audubon says that "[American] crows are highly sociable and will hang out in murders and communal roosts." (The website All About Birds says that "American Crows congregate in large numbers in winter to sleep in communal roosts. These roosts can be of a few hundred up to two million crows," and that they "maintain[] a territory year round in which the entire extended family lives and forages together. But during much of the year, individual crows leave the home territory to join large flocks at dumps and agricultural fields.")

    Sorry for getting carried away. My son has always been fascinated with corvids, crows in particular, and so I've picked up lots of usually useless information over the years.

    In Portland, OR there is a unique phenomena during the fall and winter where about an hour before sunset, all the crows in the city will come together to roost in downtown Portland. It is estimated up to 15,000 birds come together to roost. Story here r

    When I was in my freshman year of college, we all gathered to watch Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. The next morning, going to class the females were confronted with a large colony of seagulls across the street from their dorm on our football field. Some of them got freaked out.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    Cows do behave like that from time to time, a protest against milking conditions.

    Yep. And it's worse when they shit from on high.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    Cows do behave like that from time to time, a protest against milking conditions.

    Yep. And it's worse when they shit from on high.

    Birdie birdie in the sky
    Dropped a turdy in my eye
    I'm a big boy, I don't cry
    Sure am glad that cows don't fly.
  • They don't so much fly as plummet.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    One jumped over the moon.
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