Even for native speakers, English can be a fiendishly difficult language to learn. All those grammatical rules...and all the exceptions to all those grammatical rules. Words that sound the same but that are spelled differently and that mean different things (dear, deer). Words that are spelled the same but that sound different and that mean different things (wind [air], wind [twist]). Participles dangling dangerously and sentences running on....
Fortunately, we live in an age where transitive vampires and other creatures constantly arise to do battle with our language. Their goal: to whip English into something vaguely resembling a nice, proper language (like Latin, maybe, or Spanish). Or, failing that, to at least help us all make some sense of the thing.
Some of the more interesting battles have revolved around one of the most basic aspects of any language: how we name things. And some of the more intriguing titles that have arisen from these battles are those devoted to collective nouns (i.e., the names we give to multiple members of a particular group). Many such titles focus on the natural world...
...but not necessarily:
Even fine press editions have been published in pursuit of the elusive collective noun:
Such titles are a great way to introduce children to the joys of book collecting (not to mention reluctant adults)....
The great thing is, there's still lots of stuff for which English does not yet provide a collective noun.
Wordsmiths, ink your quills (or whatever it is you do with that boxy electronic thingy)....
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