A Ponderation Of Broken Hearts

Have you ever wondered where collective nouns came from? Or why we call a group of lions, a pride? Or a pride of fish, a school.

Well, wonder no more!

Collective nouns–such as an unkindness of ravens, a troubling of goldfish, and a bloat of hippopotami–may seem so perfect they must have been engraved on stone tablets at Mt. Sinai, but they weren’t. They were just made up.

This is a true fact!

Juliana Bernes, the one time prioress at St. Albans, made the entire list of collective nouns herself, all the way back in 1480. This begs many questions. Where did she come up with such fantastic names? Why are we still using them after so many years. And seeing as she was a Nun, was she divinely inspired, or just sexually frustrated? We’ll probably never know the answer.*

In any case, I made up my own list of collective nouns. Who knows why I did it**, but here they are:

• A plague of tax collectors
• An orchestra of rain clouds
• A blueprint of architects
• A mayhem of dinosaurs (meat eaters)
• A hillock (sometimes prominence) of dinosaurs (plant eaters)
• A quintessence of unicorns
• A drama of princesses
• A danger of original ideas
• A rumble of dumptrucks
• A rhythm of conspiracies
• A songbook of solar systems
• A ponderation of broken hearts
• A claustrophobia of lawyers
• A clown car of comedians
• An obstacle of congressmen
• A piggy bank of toys
• A determination of heroin addicts
• A hipflask of trouble
• A legislation of senators
• A declivity of ex-presidents
• A stumbling of false starts
• An ejaculation of republicans
• A clusterfuck of democrats
• A pap smear of orphans
• A timetable of regrets
• A lifetime of corpses
• A stupor of hobos
• A thimble of magicians
• A closetful of homosexuals

Please don’t clutter the comments with your own collective nouns, as they will be far inferior to the ones provided here.

Please note, this blog post was written by a troop of monkeys writing on a titillation of typewriters

*She was sexually frustrated

**I was sexually frustrated

Check out Decater's new novel, available now at Amazon. Plus, don't forget his earlier books: Ahab's Adventures in Wonderland and Picasso Painted Dinosaurs.