There's also a standard name for such nouns in aggregate; "terms of venery".
"Venery" in this context means hunting game animals, a usage that dates back to the late Middle Ages. Terms of venery are the conventional nouns used to designate collections of game animals.
They're colorful, as you already know. There are a bunch of them that we've inherited from the late Middle Ages.
On the other hand, there are a bunch more of them with more recent origin, presumably because amusement with the inherited ones has motivated lovers of words to coin new ones.
James Lipton wrote a book entitled An Exaltation of Larks collecting a lot of terms of venery, both ancient and modern. If you are amused by "a murder of crows" and "a parliament of owls" then you'd probably like the book.
"Venery" in this context means hunting game animals, a usage that dates back to the late Middle Ages. Terms of venery are the conventional nouns used to designate collections of game animals.
They're colorful, as you already know. There are a bunch of them that we've inherited from the late Middle Ages.
On the other hand, there are a bunch more of them with more recent origin, presumably because amusement with the inherited ones has motivated lovers of words to coin new ones.
James Lipton wrote a book entitled An Exaltation of Larks collecting a lot of terms of venery, both ancient and modern. If you are amused by "a murder of crows" and "a parliament of owls" then you'd probably like the book.