Collective Terms for Animals
This section is a pretty comprehensive list of Collective Terms for Animals. Many will be familiar but others will be unheard of, deriving from 15th century witticisms or literary imagination, and some are simply archaic or erroneous. There are also some terms for pairs of animals and groups of three animals.
The list has been arranged alphabetically.
Here is the list of Terms for Animals beginning with A.
animal | group or collective term | notes |
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albatross | rookery | strictly, a breeding-place, not a group term |
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angel fish | host | possibly invented (after `a host of angels) |
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ants | army | |
bike | |
colony | |
swarm | |
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antelope | cluster | |
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herd | standard |
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tribe | |
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apes | shrewdness | fanciful |
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troop | standard |
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archer fish | company | possibly invented (after `a company of archers') |
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asses | coffle | probably a term for a roped line |
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drove | properly, when driven in a group |
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herd | standard |
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pace or passe | |
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auks | colony | on land |
flock | at sea |
raft | on water: used of other waterfowl |
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avocets | colony | |
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