I caught up on NPR's "Studio 360" files this week, including an interview with James Lipton. Lipton, in case you didn't know, is a linguist and playwright who wrote the book on collective nouns--An Exaltation of Larks. It turns out a bunch of people in the late 1400s enjoyed creating new collectives. They were the ones who came up with pride of lions, leap of leopards, and murder of crows. (What do you call a pair of crows? Attempted murder.)
It was a delightful conversation, complete with Lipton's judgments on listeners' submissions--a salutation of yoga instructors. A deck of Trekkies. A rave of deejays. And my favorite, a hedge of investment bankers.
The game sounded like so much fun, I came up with a few of my own about the kinds of people I know. A pen of writers. A staff of musicians. A palette of artists. A skein of knitters. A bed of gardeners. A hush of librarians.
Now it's your turn. Got any collective nouns to share with the world?
