This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Collective Nouns
Feb
11
2021
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.
And he happened upon a particular place and spent the night there, because the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place and made it a support for his head, and lay down in that place.
Genesis 28:11
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 12:26 pm and has been carefully placed in the Ponder category.
