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stranger
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What is the term for collective nouns such as a "skulk" of foxes or a "murder" of crows?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Terms of venary, or summat like that.
A venary of nouns?
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addict
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Uh, it is summat like venary - it's venery, from an old word for "hunting". Looks a lot like it'd come from the same root as venereal (from a different sort of hunting...), but it doesn't.
Best modern tome on the subject (terms of venery, not things venereal) is An Exaltation of Larks. Great stuff.
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At the risk of being obvious (and perhaps a little bit cheeky)  , um, wouldn't the term be "Collective Nouns"? (Or am I missing the point? ... Quite possible.) Anyway, I really just popped in to say WELCOME  to the Board, and thanks for posting your question. You've already got people's minds ticking over... good for you, rdeib!
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Carpal Tunnel
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And anybody who know anything about foxes knows they may skulk, but they do not collect. That term was probably hatched by some fashionable idiot in a parlor game a couple hundred years ago.
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old hand
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old hand
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Ummm... I thunk that garbage can wuz a collective noun. 
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A venary of nouns?A commune of collective nouns?
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old hand
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old hand
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it's venery, from an old word for "hunting". Looks a lot like it'd come from the
same root as venereal (from a different sort of hunting...), but it doesn't. Was not Diana goddess of the hunt, AND goddess of the um, er, "hunt" with the "h" replaced by a "c?" 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Looks a lot like it'd come from the same root as venereal (from a different sort of hunting...), but it doesn't.This is not quite a cleave/cleave situation. They do indeed come from the same root if you go back far enough, at least according to the AHD. http://www.bartleby.com/61/22/V0052200.htmlhttp://www.bartleby.com/61/23/V0052300.htmlThey diverged pretty quickly.
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
Was not Diana goddess of the hunt, AND goddess of the um, er, "hunt" with the "h" replaced by a "c?"
Diana was a virgin goddess. Venereal comes from the name of her niece, Venus.
Bingley
Bingley
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Carpal Tunnel
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'...words like a "skulk" of foxes or a "murder" of crows...
This looks like the canonical place to trot out [again] that old joke about the four English professors who were approached by several "ladies of the evening" while strolling through Hyde Park. Pedantic as always, the scholars spent the next moments (after rebufffing the offer, of course) discussing what social phenomenon had just transpired.
"It was a flurry of strumpets," said the first.
"A jam of tarts," offered the second.
"An essay of trollops," chimed in the third.
"An anthology of pros," chuckled the fourth.
Whereupon a bystander, Cockney to the core, corrected them all: " 'Ell, no, Guvnors, it was just a feathering of 'ores!"
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Carpal Tunnel
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Venereal comes from the name of her niece, Venus
who was also a virgin. Over and over and over.
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