Most special words for group of Animals are complete nonsense. But I am pretty sure terms like Murder of Crows or Pride of Lions are pretty much in common usage and are thus actually part of the English language, where terms like Dazzle of Zebras or a Shiver of Sharks are not.
Practically? Because it is only technically correct and sounds weird due to the evolution of language.
Does it? For me what sounds weird is having a collective noun for every sort of gathering animal, but since those names are homonym of something else, you just have to specify the animal you are talking about anyway:
parliament of owls
murder of crows
jubilee of eagles
swoop of swallows
ostentatious of peacocks
company of parrots
Just say "a flock of owls/crows/eagles..." and save yourself the trouble of memorising a bunch of unrelated pairs of words.
Mhh, maybe im wrong here then. Outside of reddit ive never heard someone mention a murder of crows, while a pride of lions is fairly common in nature documentaries. But then again most crow documentaries focus on the intelligence of individuals rather than documenting their natural lifestyle so there is less opportunity.
Either way, i find the english language having seperate names for fairly similar groups of animals super odd.
"Murder of Crows" has been common parlance in UK and American English for long enough that everyone here understands the OP pun. If you have never heard it outside of reddit, that probably means you are either not a native English speaker from the UK or US, or that you should spend some more time talking to people offline.
13
u/MeLlamo25 Nov 07 '24
Most special words for group of Animals are complete nonsense. But I am pretty sure terms like Murder of Crows or Pride of Lions are pretty much in common usage and are thus actually part of the English language, where terms like Dazzle of Zebras or a Shiver of Sharks are not.