Collective nouns and congressional bananas

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Ivan Seeking

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The English language has some wonderfully anthropomorphic collective nouns for the various groups of animals.

We are all familiar with a Herd of cows, a Flock of chickens, a School of fish and a Gaggle of geese.

However, less widely known is a Pride of lions, a Murder of crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens), an Exaltation of doves and, presumably because they look so wise, a Parliament of owls.

Now consider a group of Baboons. They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least intelligent of all primates.

And what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons?

A congress.

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Answers and Replies

  • #2
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  • #3
Or for incongruous, I like a "troubling of goldfish".
 
  • #4
A business of ferrets.
 
  • #5
New ones?

A prickle of politicians

A rub of masseuses

A ponder of PFers?
 
  • #6
A prison of politicians?
 
  • #7
A giggle of gays?
 
  • #8
A slew of lawyers?
 
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  • #9
A screw of prostitutes?
 
  • #10
A recursion of collective nouns?
 
  • #11
  • #12
Thanks :)
 
  • #13
A degeneration of bad jokes?
 
  • #14
You are nice?

By which I mean...

Origin:
1250–1300; Middle English: foolish, stupid < Old French: silly, simple < Latin nescius ignorant, incapable, equivalent to ne- negative prefix + sci- (stem of scīre to know; see science) + -us adj. suffix

"The first joke recorded by history was about wheat it was not funny."

Some Egyptian...
 
  • #15
A matrix of mathematicians

A neighborhood of mathematicians

An explosion of chemists

A fireball of electrical engineers

A coronary of system's integration engineers

A Valhalla of Norwegians
 
  • #16
Genuinely the group name for nuns is a superfluidity of nuns.
 
  • #17
A fusion of nuclear engineers

A fuzzyfelt of artists
 
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