'Group' Therapy

In the Year of Her Lord 1486, a book was published in St Albans. It was called, with incredible simplicity, ‘The Book of St Albans’ and was credited to Dame Juliana Berners. It was aimed squarely at the huntin’ an’ shootin’ and fishin’ types, probably because the Sun readers of the day hadn’t learned that they couldn’t read yet.

‘The Book of St Albans’ is memorable today for one reason; within its pages Dame Juliana more or less invented the concept of collective nouns – words for a group of things. As nobody had brought these words together before the good Dame she was free to do as she liked. And, apparently, she liked very much, which is why we now have a bellowing of Bullfinches, a plump of Moorhens and a murder of Crows.

But these were laid down over six centuries ago. Dame Juliana tried her best to move with the times, I’m sure, but there’s a limit to how far you can predict the future. Most things that we take for granted today would baffle her. Most of them baffle me to be honest.

With that in mind, let’s have a go at updating the list. Let’s create some new collective nouns, starting with a couple for my golfing buddies:

·         A Jed of Woods;

·         A ningboard of Irons;

·         An i-Sore of Gadgets;

·         A midden of D*n Br*wn Books;

·         An assimilation of Post Offices;

·         A deluge of British Summers;

·         A catatonia of TOWIE and Big Brother ‘stars’;

·         A serpent of Politicians;

·         A slumber  of Lords;

·         A redundancy of Big-Budget Movie Remakes;

·         A meringue of Big Fat Gypsy Weddings;

·         An irrelevance of Tweets;

·         A Cousteau of Chelsea forwards;

·         A remainder of Books by Shaun Finnie.

So that’s my claim for Damehood. Now it’s over to you…

© Shaun Finnie 2012