I adore the English language. (It’s the only one I’m fluent in and thus the only one I can speak about with any intelligence.) English began as the everyday speech of Anglo-Saxon settlers, was reshaped by Norse neighbors who simplified and blended it, was overlaid with French vocabulary after the Norman Conquest, thickened with Latin through church and scholarship, and then spent centuries absorbing words from trade, empire, science, and immigration. It breaks every rule in the book and then writes three more.

Consider the collective noun. We could say a group of crows. We do not. We say a murder. I know this thanks to one of my favorite oddball books, An Exaltation of Larks, by James Lipton. Lipton gathered more than a thousand of these phrases, some dating back to the fifteenth century, some intrepidly invented later. He wasn’t, by any means, the first to compile such a list. Many credit Dame Juliana Berners, who in 1486 decided that animals deserved better branding. Her The Boke of St. Albans included 165 collective nouns under the brisk heading The Compaynys of beestys and fowlys and named:

a Cete of Badgers
a Sloth of Bears
a Shrewdness of Apes
a Skulk of Foxes
a Leap of Leopards
a Pride of Lions
a Business of Ferrets
a Labour of Moles
a Pace of Asses
a Barren of Mules
a Sounder of Wild Swine
a Route of Wolves
an Exaltation of Larks
a Murmuration of Starlings
an Unkindness of Ravens
a Murder of Crows
a Charm of Goldfinches
a Siege of Herons
a Gaggle of Geese (on water)
a Skein of Geese (in flight)
a Mustering of Storks
a Watch of Nightingales
a Tidings of Magpies
a Desert of Lapwings
a Superfluity of Nuns
an Abominable Sight of Monks
a Sentence of Judges
an Eloquence of Lawyers
a Doctrine of Doctors
a Diligence of Messengers
a Melody of Harpers
a Blast of Hunters
a Poverty of Pipers
a Drunkship of Cobblers
an Impatience of Wives
a Skulk of Thieves

Some of these are perfect descriptors—a skulk of thieves, a blast of hunters, a leap of leopards. Others have onomatopoeia on their side: a murmuration of starlings, a gaggle of geese, a sentence of lawyers. Others just make you smile: an impatience of wives, an unkindness of ravens, a charm of goldfinches. None of these are mere labels. They are poetry, whimsy, and occasionally a little unhinged.

What I love most is that none of this was necessary. English could have stayed plain and serviceable. Instead, somewhere along the way, we decided that buffalo might travel in an obstinacy, that peacocks move in ostentation, and that larks deserve exaltation. This is, to me, pure joy.

It inspires me—and, I hope, you—to make up your own. A reckoning of women. A revision of editors. A cadence of poets. A fog of bureaucrats. A flex of bros. A confessional of housewives.

I could do this all day.

Here are some others found in Lipton’s book:

a Crash of Rhinoceroses
a Dazzle of Zebras
a Smack of Jellyfish
a Convocation of Eagles
a Bloat of Hippopotamuses
a Blessing of Unicorns
a Credulity of Confidence Men
a Vanish of Magicians
a Riot of Actors
a Scold of Critics

If you love language, Lipton’s book is worth hunting down and may be found here.