[Lexicog] Measure words

[David Tuggy]

Several of these are different in that they refer to sub-portions of the
designatum of a mass noun --a batch of bread, a skein of wool, a truss
of hay--, rather than to a collection of individuals. Of course, there
is a sense in which they are the same thing, in that plurals are a kind
of mass nouns, so that one can think of a gaggle of geese as a
sub-portion of the set of "geese", which would be as unbounded in extent
as are "bread", "wool", and "hay".

I don't think I had heard of "a smuck of jellyfish"--I like it!

I have seen things like "a brood of vipers" (which you have below) or "a
cloud of witnesses" (which you don't) in such lists, but I always wonder
if they really fit. I mean, John the Baptist and Jesus, in saying "brood
of vipers", presumably meant "offspring of vipers", which is a less than
clear collective in that the "vipers" are presumably the parents rather
than so directly the offspring (though they too are of course bound to
be vipers as well). And the "cloud of witnesses" may be more of an
active metaphor (witnesses who surround us like a cloud) than a
collective, though of course the two functions are not incompatible. The
term could not be used to designate just any group of witnesses, but
rather a very large group, preferably surrounding those whose actions
they witness (or those to whom they witness). In any case, these
expressions are different in that they came from Greek, where as far as
I know collective terms were not used as in English, and if they are
collective terms in English it must have been through a kind of folk
reanalysis.

Similarly "a brood of chickens" to me means a group of  immature
chickens, in the prototypical case all from the same hatching, children
of the same mother hen, rather than any arbitrary grouping of chickens.
A "chest of drawers" is another I would put in a different sort of list:
it is not a name for a group of drawers, but rather for a piece of
furniture that has drawers in it.

--David Tuggy

John Roberts wrote:

> They can also be called "group terms" or "collections". Many are not
> commonly used in English any more. Where would you find information on
> the
> following collocations?
>
> a bench of bishops
> a bench of magistrates
> a baren of mules
> a bevy of ladies
> a bevy of quails
> a brood of chickens
> a brood of vipers
> a cast of hawks
> a cete of badgers
> a clowder of cats
> a covey of grouse
> a covey of actors
> a down of hares
> a drove of cattle
> a fall of woodcock
> a gaggle of geese
> a batch of bread
> a chest of drawers
> a clutch of eggs
> a kindle of kittens
> a leap of leopards
> a nide of pheasants
> a punnet of strawberries
> a rope of pearls
> a set of tools
> a sheaf of arrows
> a sheaf of papers
> a suite of furniture
> a suite of offices
> a school of whales
> a skein of wool
> a skein of geese
> a skulk of foxes
> a sloth of bears
> a smuck of jellyfish
> a stud of horses
> a troop of lions
> a truss of hay
> etc.
>
> John Roberts
>
>
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