Short Stuff: Nouns of assemblage... assemble!

A gaggle of geese. A murder of crows. Nouns of assemblage are awesome and we talk about them for about 12 minutes in today's Short Stuff installment.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is short stuff.
There's a hairness of podcasters working together right now. I
wonder what. Yeah, I had a feeling that was coming.
I just didn't know what you're gonna use. What would
you have said? I don't know. I have no idea.

(00:24):
I didn't think about it enough. But I will say this,
I didn't either. I know you're just you're quick with it.
I'm not. I'm dim. No. I love this stuff so much.
For a second I thought we were talking about fall grog. No.
I love this stuff. I love words, as you know.

(00:45):
I love um, etymology, etymology, entomology, etymology, etymology, I love
where they come from. I love everything about the nouns
of assemblage, which is what we're talking about, which is
if you've ever heard a Murder of crows or a
Harry a Harness of podcasters, a Harry of Henderson Inderson's,

(01:08):
that's called a noun of assemblage, which is a great
band name. And I know I say that a lot,
but that really is a great band name. The nouns
of assemblage. I think so, Yeah, but what would it
be that feels like sort of shoe gaze nineties to me? Okay, yeah,
I was gonna say like kind of yeah, yeah, nouns
of assemblage opening for slow dive exactly. But that's what

(01:32):
we're talking about here, um, and we're gonna talk about
a lot of the specific ones, but also the story
of how these came about. For the most part. Yeah,
it turns out that there was a book that came
out in fourteen eighties six um that kicked off this
kind of craze that lasted a little while that basically said, hey,

(01:53):
you know how there's no such thing as teenagers are
college yet. Well, we're going to foreshead all that by
coming up with some word gags with the Book of St. Alban's,
which um is basically a gentleman's guide to things like hunting,
dog breeds, heraldry, sporting, just that kind of like falconry
falconry with that that kind of like fifteenth century like

(02:16):
guide to manliness is basically what it was. Yeah, man,
I want to copy of this. I looked online to
buy one. Um. It's it's not affordable, but they do
have a they do have a PDF, okay there, because
my first thought was, Man, I'm gonna buy one of
these incentives to John Hodgman, like he would totally appreciate this.
But uh, yeah, I might just print and bind the

(02:38):
PDF and send to him instead. Like, I don't know,
I think Hodgement would appreciate it. I don't think it
would sink into him that you would like taken out
a second mortgage on your house that buy him that book?
You know, not gonna happen. I think the PDF is
going to be just fine. Yeah, So we said nounds
of assemblage. They can also be called terms of venery,
and they're linked to Norman cult. Sure. Um a lot

(03:01):
of them came about from hunting and things like fishing
in falconry that we're talking about, right, Like venery actually
means hunting, yeah, and that that Middle English. It also
means sex in Middle English, which is a weird combo
if you think about it, Like, what kind of venry
are you asking me for now? Exactly we're gonna be
hunting foxes or hunting foxes? They say both. Well, this

(03:28):
book has a lot of stuff in it, but there
is a chapter called uh and this is four eight
six so there's a lot of wise where you would
see eyes like Chaucer style. So the Companies of beast,
Ease and Foulis, which is a great, great chapter title,
and they basically it sounds like a bunch of dudes

(03:50):
in the fourteen hundreds sat around, drank a lot of
booze and had a good old time making up these
nouns of assemblage rights, which is really cute in a way.
I mean, there's a lot of cuteness to the fact
that that this was ever like a big deal. But
some of the things that we talked about today, like
a host of angels or shock of corn, or a

(04:11):
panel of judges, like all of those come from, if
not this book, the little kind of trend in making
up nouns of assemblage that the book kicked off. Yeah,
so you've got a sleuth of bears, a skulk of foxes.
It also tells you a little bit about the time
and that both women and geese were gaggles. But if

(04:33):
you have a group of wives, a group of married
women together there and impatience of wives or noon patients
in Middle English seems kind of Dutch to me, But
I guess they're both derived from Germanic writers were a
worship of writers, so they clearly thought a lot about
their own talents. Um, congregation of church goers, a staff

(04:55):
of employees. All those kind of came from this whole thing.
So there was like a lot of words that we
we came up with or that was that that the
this book put out or the trend came up with
that we still used today. But because they were terms
of venery, it was mostly meant um for animals. So
like the fact that humans were showing up in here

(05:16):
at all was meant to be kind of like a joke,
like a bit of satire, because the terms were meant
to be nouns of assemblage for animals specifically. Yeah, and
I think it became sort of a just popular trend
period outside of this book, and younger people started making
these things up, and it just became a bit of
a fad for a little while it did. It was
kind of like, um, it was like stuffing yourself into

(05:42):
foam booths fifteenth century style. That's right, You want to
take a break real quick, and then we'll just come
back and say some more of these because it's a
lot of fun to do. Agreed, okay, alright, started off chuck.

(06:14):
All right, we'll go to birds. Uh, there are a
lot of them for birds, because they hunted birds and
birds are everywhere, so that's where we get murder of crows.
I think that's one of the more common ones. That
people know, an unkindness of ravens, which I had heard before,
and that they kind of make a point here in
this Household Works article that it really indicates, like the

(06:36):
gaggo of women and geese is how they felt about
these things. So murder and unkindness for these two birds
that people don't really like. Where you'll have a charm
of finches because they're super cute. That's one of my favorites.
It's a good one. There's also a college of cardinals,
which for some reason to me is really evocative, Like
it really brings to mind a bright red cardinal for
some reason. So I like that one. Yeah, I think

(06:59):
that's kind of part of it. You know, it's supposed
to really be evocative too, although some of them are
clearly jokey um, a mustering of storks who knows, but
it's worth mentioning, right, There's one that c. S. Lewis
Coin that's actually now considered in dictionaries as the proper
way to say a group of owls that's a parliament. Yeah,

(07:21):
that's pretty cool too. Yeah, way to go, Cee s Lewis.
Let me see here, you've got insects, swarm of bees
is stuck around. There are not a ton of downs
of assemblage for insects though, business of flies, which I'd
never heard of. If you have a bunch of lights,
what's it called a flock of lice? Which is that's
just creepy. Yeah. I think they should have gone with
a beard of bees, yeah, instead of a swarm. And

(07:45):
then there's some of the cutest ones are are reserved
for baby versions of our pets, domesticated animals, like a
kindle of kittens. I looked up the puppies one. Are
you ready for this? It's a pitle of puppies And
because you think it is, I'm glad I know that

(08:06):
now because I often tell the story of when I
got my dog who was no longer with this, Buckley.
I went to the shelter and there was a pile
of puppies all together in a little ball, and he's
the only one who peeled away from that pital and
came over to me. So I was like, you're the one.
You're the one. But now I know a pitle of puppies.
That's great. Agreed, it is pretty great. Um what else, Chuck?

(08:30):
There's wild animals, a pride of lions, a wisdom of wombats,
which I had not heard before. Yeah, I mean, you've
also got dogs. A pack of dogs was one, but
dogs had a bunch of them because dogs were pets
and they were hunting friends, and so they were You
could have a kinnel of dogs, a pack of dogs,
a cry or a mute of dogs. Yeah, those were

(08:51):
just the hunting hounds in particular. There's also gang legion,
a meat of dogs. Yeah, a meat of dog. It
sounds like they're up to something, you know. Yeah. And
although you may have a kindle of kittens, once those
kittens grow up, they become a clouder of and that's
clo w d e r of cats, a clouder of cats,

(09:13):
which is better than a chowder of cats. Really, God,
I said some of the wild animals already. But the
uh if you notice, the flies group was called the
business of flies. There's also a business of ferrets. And
really it makes a lot of sense because it's business
is derived from business, like something that's busy and moving

(09:36):
about and everything, which really does apply to both a
bunch of flies and a bunch of ferrets too. So
some of these work kind of right on. A gam
of whales seems a little out of the blue. Yeah,
A prickle of hedgehogs makes sense. A bloat of hippos
makes sense. But what about an obstinate an obstinacy of buffalo, Yeah,

(09:57):
that makes sense. They they're kind of immovable, you know,
I guess, so, So I say, I propose that we
stopped for now, but we start a spinoff podcast where
every episode we just spend an hour saying these things. Okay, Yeah,
and if you want to ever go on Jeopardy, I
would recommend memorizing all of them. Yeah, agreed, agreed. Uh,

(10:18):
And if you want to know more about these, you
can go onto how stuff works dot com and look
up this really great article. And uh, since we said
that everybody short stuff is out. Stuff you should know
is a production of iHeart Radios. How Stuff Works. For
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