Some Blog Site

Who decides what groups of things are called?

I saw one of those lists of odd names for groups of animals, like a clowder of kittens, and wondered why that name stuck.

And what does one have to do to propose a name for a group of things when that group doesn’t have a specific name yet. I’ve tried to find an animal that doesn’t have a collective noun, but everyone has already thought of all the animals I could think of.

Let me know if you can not find a certain animal that a website somewhere doesn’t already have or propose a collective noun.

Then I noticed that there are terms only for living things. I thought there might be an opportunity to name a group of something not living. But what non-living things gather in groups?

Clouds! – clouds can gather in groups, maybe. Certainly not intentionally, but the wind might corral them in one place sometimes. Alas, a quick search on the interwebs informed me that “a billow of clouds” has been proposed.

Dust bunnies also gather in groups, but I figured they’d be called “a colony” because regular bunnies already use that term.

Other things that gather in groups are N64 game cartridges, cereal boxes, comic books, and pillows.

I supposed one could create and propose group names for each of those items, plus countless other inanimate objects. The only one that I was inspired to name was for pillows. In keeping with the spirit of some of the other collective terms (a blessing of unicorns, an intrusion of cockroaches, a flamboyance of flamingoes, etc.), I am proposing that a group of pillows be called a “puddle”.

No real reason, that was just the term that popped into my head. After “pile”, but “pile” was not really memorable.

There you go – a group of pillows is called a puddle.

So let it be written.

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