![]() Also known by the title The Book of Hawking, Hunting and Blasing of Arms, Berners' 1486 publication of this gentlemen’s catalogue of wildlife and hunting included 165 collective nouns for animal species, and is said to make her one of the earliest female authors writing in the English language. People have been coming up with terms to describe animal groupings for hundreds of years, but it wasn’t until The Book of St Albans, written by Juliana Berners, a 15th-Century Benedictine prioress from England, that they were recorded extensively. But I still wanted to know if these collective nouns were simply a gimmick employed by safari guides to engage their guests, or if they had actual roots in the English language.Īs it turns out, these scintillating nouns are neither coincidence nor misnomer, but rather the result of centuries of linguistic evolution. ![]() Of course, the obligatory wildlife photos were shared with friends and family, inclusive of clever captions decrying their relevant animal groupings. The safari proved a singular travel experience that stayed with me long after I returned home. Australia’s ancient language shaped by sharks.Fits of puerile laughter, comparable only to schoolchildren discussing flatulence, ensued. ![]() “Look, they’re doing the business!” I exclaimed to my travel companions, a couple celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary. As I watched their valiant amorous activities, the temptation was ineluctable. The opportunity arose when we stopped to observe ‘a business of mongoose’. These collective nouns begged for further wordplay. But along came ‘a tower of giraffes’, ‘a confusion of wildebeests’ and, reposed contentedly under the blazing sub-Saharan sun, ‘a bask of crocodiles’. ‘A bloat of hippos’ was a witty and whimsical linguistic contrast to the almost Orwellian ‘nest of vipers’ and ‘murder of crows’ that I had always attributed to poetic license. ![]() My smile matched his as I laughed at how apropos the word seemed at describing this mass of bulky beasts. “A bloat of hippos!” he answered rhetorically with the grin of a man who knew this tidbit of information would delight his guests. “Do you know what those are called?” the safari guide at Botswana’s Chobe Game Lodge queried while I watched a large group of hippos unabashedly bathing in the waters of the Chobe River. ![]()
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