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A chum in Vermont sent me this anonymous quotation: "A cat can do little but a clowder of cats can work great havoc." That sent me running to my dictionary. I have been amused by the great variety of collective nouns in English for a long while, but never before have I heard/read that "clowder" describes a number of cats, house cats, domestic cats. A "kyndyll" or "kindle" of kittens ... yes ... but never a clowder, once they are all grown up.
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Curiously enough, while watching a program on TV that used one of these terms, "clowder" was the first that came to mind for me, even ahead of my personal favourite, a lamentation of swans.
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don't know why, but I've always liked "murder" of crows. and would that be: "chum clowder"?  and btw, it wasn't me. 
formerly known as etaoin...
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journeyman
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journeyman
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a clowder of cats can work great havoc
All things in moderation
Is a saying of great repute
A cat is a great companion
But a clowder deserves only the boot.
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Here's a fun collection of collective nouns: James Lipton's An Exaltation of Larks, paperback ISBN 0140170960. Beware, for some reason (anybody know?), book titles don't carry copyrights, so there are several out there with the same name.
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The short answer to why the title of a book may not be protected by copyright is that the law says it may not, or rather, excludes titles from the list of things which are subject to copyright protection.
The longer answer is that it would be altogther silly to allow anyone to copyright the title of a book, in that this would (theoretically) prohibit a cataloguer from listing it, a bibliopole from advertising it, a reviewer from reviewing it, and so on.
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Also, I think that pretty soon it would leave authors/publishers with either no choice for a title, or one that was wildly inappropriate.
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prohibit a cataloguer from listing it, [...]and so on
I don't follow that, Father - surely all they'd have to do is acknowledge the ®?
I think it's far more likely to be as Jackie suggests: if eligible, all possible permutations would get rapidly swallowed in a feeding frenzy that would make website domain problems seem like a cakewalk!
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journeyman
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journeyman
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The short answer to why the title of a book may not be protected by copyright is that the law says it may not
Are you sure about that, Father Steve?
What about a title which consists of, or includes, an original coinage?
No example springs immediately to mind - other than a title, "Exxoneration", which is the only thing memorable about that particular work - but I'm sure others will think of better examples.
Many titles are simply descriptive and, therefore, not distinctive for copyright purposes. Others are drawn from well-known sources (example, a line from Shakespeare) and, therefore, make no pretence to originality.
But, to say an author cannot enjoy copyright in his own original coinage, whether it appears inside a book, or on its cover, is a startling proposition, Father Steve, and it offends my sense of natural justice. [Not to mention my litigious pretensions. I once had a title "Tongue Fu" stolen from me.]
May we have your citation for your legal proposition, Father Steve?
BTW the law allows one to quote from a copyrighted work for cataloguing or review purposes [with restraint and appropriate credit], whether the quote appears inside or on top of a book.
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