A babel of linguists, a byte of geeks: Terms of venery

[trochee]

anthrochica just discovered the terms of venery (you know, "a congress of baboons", "a raft of ducks", "a pride of lions", etc). mr_blink asked "what's the origin of these?"

Well, funny you should ask, because there just happened to be a linguist in the room -- or, as I like to say to exterra's 13-year-old cousins: "this sounds like a job for the Great Linguini!"

The truth is, I don't know much[1], but I do know Wikipedia. They have a pretty good page on Collective nouns, also known as terms of venery, due to the odd poetic habits of 15th century Englishmen and -women. Venery originally only referred to scent-hound hunting, [as opposed to coursing -- hunting with sight-hounds -- and falconry], but nevertheless in this phrase venery is generalized to "hunting", and from there to "animals".
(As an aside, venery as "hunting" might seem to be related to venery as in "venereal disease", but according to the American Heritage, they're distinct in Old French and were only collapsed in Middle English. It's possible that the distant root wen-¹ in Proto-IE might have been the same word, though.)

My guess is that many of the terms in Exaltation of Larks are fanciful stuff, made up by late Victorian and bored Edwardian upperclass word geeks (much like computer jargon of the 21st c.), but it certainly is entertaining.

Googling suggests I (and anthrochica!) should be careful about quoting too much of this in public: James Lipton, the author of Exaltation (and apparently the same guy who hosts the "Inside the Actors Studio" show), apparently sued somebody for $100,000[US] for making posters from the information in his book.

On the other hand, this somewhat more contemporary page on collective nouns for people seems to be more open to re-use.

I find the whole idea entertaining in a 19th-century sort of way. I like the mis-application of these terms and the creation of new ones. For example: "a babel of linguists" seems like a natural, but it turns up zero google hits.

I'm open to new suggestions. What else deserves its own collective noun? "A tribe of anthropologists"? How about "a cackle of TV show hosts"?

[1]... but I know what I like, heh.

Comments

Hmmm

[lx.livejournal.com]

A suburb of soccer moms?

A mismatch of programmers?

An embarrassment of politicians?

Re: Hmmm

[la-chispa.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like suburb and embarrassment.

Re: Hmmm

[trochee.livejournal.com]

How about bandwagon of politicians?

A thrash of metalheads?

Re: Hmmm

[lx.livejournal.com]

I think I like an omission of politicans.

A swirl of gothkids?

A pit of punks?

(A nest of comments?)

Re: Hmmm

[trochee.livejournal.com]

a depression of gothkids. (It's like a tropical depression, only darker.)

omission of politicians is funny but not terribly practical, since you might want to use the word outside of the collective use more.

Then again, that applies to most of these terms anyway. Don't know why I'm carping now.

Re: Hmmm

[lx.livejournal.com]

I think it's the case that politicans are constantly omitting anything relavent or meaningful anyway.

But I kid the political establishment with my hip reservoir of apathy!

ack!

[lx.livejournal.com]

Also, "relevant!"

He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

It's a bucket of geeks, man. That or a store of geeks. Maybe a load of geeks. I prefer bucket, but maybe that's a sign i've spent far too much time in software-land lately.

Oooh, a bedlam of bugs. A corral of cluster nodes.

Puddles of emo kids. Waves of hippies. Tribes of punks (only if they've got liberty spikes. Let's hear it for PCness!). A flood of hipsters. A keg of frat boys.

Most appropriately: a haze of mornings.

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[la-chispa.livejournal.com]

How about a queue of geeks, or perhaps programmers?

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

Or a stack. Though a stack carries connotations i'd rather forget (there was talk of the HOPE orgy in a rented room; it was apparently a lot of, well, creepy guy hackers).

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[syntheticnature.livejournal.com]

Surely it would be a cache of geeks?

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[trochee.livejournal.com]

or a cluster.
or a party (yes, LAN-party, or Dungeons and Dragons).

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[trochee.livejournal.com]

oo -- a distribution of statisticians.

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

So. Terribly. Corny!

But amusing nonetheless.

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[trochee.livejournal.com]

heh.

I take it you mean bucket as in bit-bucket or maybe hash-bucket. (Heh-heh heh-heh -- he said hash. Heh-heh.)

mayhem of bugs?

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

Most definitely hash-bucket 的 bucket.

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[trochee.livejournal.com]

oo nice use of Chinese 的 particle.

/me is impressed. It's rare that you find yourself borrowing syntax bits from another language -- vocabulary, sure, but syntax is unusual.

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

Sad fact: that feels more natural to me than the usual English possessive now. I swear that my speech is a good example of efficiency rules. "de" is so much easier to say than "'s", usually.

Also, if you need data to statistically demonstrate the "selecting n+1 out of a pool of n options guarantees a pair" principle, i have years worth of morning's sock selections that nearly perfectly demonstrate this for n>=4.

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[trochee.livejournal.com]

hee. I don't think that's a statistical assertion, but it's a delightfully complicated and geeky way to assert your frustration with certain morning rituals.

I have fun people reading my LJ.

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[trochee.livejournal.com]

it occurs to me that we already use a pool of cluster nodes which is an interesting metaphor when you think about it.
[/serious]

Re: He said "venery," heh-heh heh-heh

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

Indeed we do. It's likely derived from "candidate pool," from which you're selecting the best candidate to handle the task at hand.

Now, a pool of candidates... also interesting.

[elwe.livejournal.com]

A babel of linguists might not turn up any Google hits, but a babble of linguists should turn up at least one.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

dang! beaten to the punch...

[elwe.livejournal.com]

Well, Googling around it looks like Mariah was beaten too. I guess the joke is too easy to make.

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

Of course it's a "babble"! The underlying form is "gaggle", but in that environment "preceding linguists", it undergoes place assimiliation, 'cause, uh, linguists like to use their lips a lot, so, uh, it becomes bilabial.

We're still trying to work out the phonology of talking about linguist geese. Once we find a suitable dataset, we'll announce for findings. For now, we expect it to surface as "baggle".

A cookie to anyone with an OT analysis joke analogous to this one.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

oh dear, oh dear oh dear.

Medic!

[la-chispa.livejournal.com]

A signature of publishers. (Or editors, or binders; but printers should definitely group in a run.)

[trochee.livejournal.com]

I say a malfunctioning of printers. Oh, never mind, you meant the people or institutions. I meant the f**ing robotic extensions for moving from bits to paper.

But I do like a signature of publishers. I'm still looking for a good collective noun for intellectual property lawyers, since exterra and thevorak (my housemates) are each dating IP lawyers. A piracy of IP lawyers?

[la-chispa.livejournal.com]

Actually, our book printer also belongs in a malfunctioning.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

izzat why i haven't gotten an issue of D&S yet?

... ouch. sorry, that wasn't very nice. I'm looking forward to reading it; here's hoping it gets here soon.

Also, I wrote a semi-cranky note to the D&S business manager about requiring too much snoopy information to use the web payment form. It went sort of like this:
"why do you need my phone number and email when I'm giving you money to send me a magazine? and the radios in my teeth say I shouldn't give you all that information -- doesn't the NSA and the secret underground commie world government already provide it?"

... okay, I didn't say that last part. I know the secret underground world government isn't really commie. And they're using Bluetooth technology, not radios, in my teeth. Why else would they call it that?

[la-chispa.livejournal.com]

izzat why i haven't gotten an issue of D&S yet?

Only very indirectly. Email me your address and I'll ship one off myself. (first intitial no space last name at abml dot org)

[isolt.livejournal.com]

Dammit, I can't think of any clever ones. I'm in awe of the collective wit in this thread :)

[moretea.livejournal.com]

A Convention of Penguins

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dkg_/]

i know i'm late to the party, but:

a lot of auctioneers!