Eccentric Flower talk:200910/Very Interesting

ProfRobert:

Mmmmm, bourbon lollipops, mmmmm.

I have to grade the PVP "Fail" because it's missing a Moby Dick reference -- *that* would have been a Win.

-- 15:07, 30 October 2009 (GMT)

Joy:

I once spent an entire 6 hour drive to a conference coming up with groupings for various kinds of academics: a grammar of linguists, etc. Hmm, I think we told bizarre made-up knock knock jokes too.

That was before I "impressed" everyone by cutting off a NYC cab and getting around a small traffic jam and into our parking lot by driving up onto the curb (just barely). I realize this is irrelevant, but I just remembered that for the first time in maybe a decade!

-- 19:30, 30 October 2009 (GMT)

Mmancuso:

My favorites: a quiver of geniuses; an exigency of wendigoes

-- 23:37, 30 October 2009 (GMT)

Ursula:

With these collective noun deals, I always get fussy and wonder, "Who SAYS?" Seriously, the only time I ever encounter a "flobble of fliggles" is when somebody makes a cute online list about what you call a group of fliggles, it's not like it's in the dictionary or something. Is there some Collective Noun Council that figures out to call a group of crows a murder, and then they issue a memo? I tend to suspect the person who wrote the list made half that stuff up.

-- 23:39, 30 October 2009 (GMT)

Nonelvis:

@Ursula: From what I've learned about collective nouns elsewhere today (via the source of the link), it seems that many of them were developed in the 15th century, so we've had a long time to agree on the terms. I wouldn't normally quote James Lipton, but I think he's probably dead-on here:

Obviously, at one time or another, every one of these terms had to be invented---and it is equally obvious that much imagination, wit and semantic ingenuity has always gone into that invention: the terms are so charming and poetic it is hard to believe that their inventors were unaware of the possibilities open to them, and unconscious of the fun and beauty they were creating.

--An Exaltation of Larks

-- 02:42, 31 October 2009 (GMT)