While we guess the earliest “venereal” terms referred to animals exclusively, over time more such nouns of multitude were applied to people, too. Poets through the centuries have been “drinking in” beauty, hence the bevy of beauties (young women).

“Bevy” is an enduring English nickname for beverage. OK, so that last one is a different kind of hunting with a fun, if dubious and obscure, backstory. A business of ferrets and a bevy of beauties. What has that to do with collectives? Game, of course. Venereal as in terms of venery, derived from Latin root ven, essentially the hunt. (So if their attorney pleads it down, would that make them a manslaughter of crows?)īetter yet is the title James Lipton, that venerable man of words and humor, chose for his light treatise of collectives, “An Exaltation of Larks or, The Venereal Game.” More than one author has purloined the favorite “murder of crows” for a mystery title. What better excuse to have fun with it?Ĭase in point: Collective nouns. English is an odd language, with more than its share of the superfluous, even the ridiculous.

A mischief