Montessori | Collective Nouns

Collective Nouns (Montessori English Language Lesson and Worksheet)

An unkindness of ravens, a blessing of unicorns. Can you guess the other terms used to refer to a group of animals? Live and learn in this fun lesson on collective nouns.

If you should ever find yourself in the middle of a group of jugglers, the word you want is “neverthriving.”

Yup.

A group of jugglers is called a “neverthriving of jugglers.”

Why? Who knows? Perhaps the writer of The Book of Saint Albans, where the term is enshrined, wanted to warn us about the profitability of a juggling career.

Whatever the reason, a neverthriving (sometimes spelled a never-thriving, not that it changes things much) is the collective noun for jugglers.

Collective Nouns

Collective nouns are nouns that refer to a group of people, things, or animals.

These collective nouns are probably already familiar to you.

Army
Bunch
Clan
Cluster
Colony
Company
Congregation
Crowd
Family
Group
Squad
Team
Troop

Some collective nouns can be used for different types of individuals.

Band – can refer to people (a band of musicians) or animals (a band of coyotes)
Batch – of students, of baked goods
Bed – of flowers, of oysters, of snakes
Bevy – of beauties, of doves, of larks (of anything, really)
Brace – of bucks, of ducks, of grouse, of goals (in football)
Caravan – of camels, of vehicles
Chain – of finches, of islands
Class – in school, in taxonomy
String – of pearls, of racehorses
Troupe – of performers, of monkeys, of shrimp

Some collective nouns mostly refer to people.

assembly of clergy
board of directors
brigade of soldiers
choir of angels (insofar as angels can be considered people)
den of thieves
panel of experts
pantheon of gods (again, insofar as…)

Some are used for people but only rarely (and some of them only in a humorous way).

ambush of widows
argument of architects
argument of wizards
neverthriving of jugglers
ponder of philosophers
prudence of vicars

There are collective nouns that are used for plants.

bouquet of flowers
clump of trees
copse of trees
grove of trees
tuft of grass

And there are collective nouns for, well, all sorts of other things.

archipelago (islands)
armada (ships)
arsenal (weapons)
belt (asteroids)
constellation (of stars)
embarrassment of riches
festival of balloons
wad of bills

But some of the most fun ones to learn are those collective nouns that are used for groups of animals (including those of the mythical variety).

Mind you, these aren’t used ALL the time. Some are used for (and originated from) literary purposes and you can usually just refer to many of these animals as a “group of” — but it’s interesting to know their collective nouns as well! Here are just a few:

bellowing of bullfinches
blessing of unicorns
bury of rabbits
congress of baboons
conspiracy of ravens
deceit of lapwings
exaltation of larks
fall of lambs
lamentation of swans
lodge of beavers
loveliness of ladybirds
memory of elephants
murder of crows
ostentation of peacocks
parliament of owls
piddle of puppies
piteousness of doves
prattle of parrots
rhumba of rattlesnakes
shrewdness of apes
siege of bitterns
thunder of dragons
tiding of magpies
trace of hares
troubling of goldfinches
turn of turtles
ubiquity of sparrows
zeal of zebras

Note: some creatures can have several different group names:

An aurora of polar bears, a celebration of polar bears
A conspiracy of ravens, an unkindness of ravens
A caravan of camels, a scorn of camels

Ready to put your new knowledge to the test?

Montessori English Language Worksheets: Collective Nouns

In the worksheets below, see if you can identify the collective nouns used for the animals in the blue boxes. These items are taken directly from a set of nomenclature cards released by the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI).

Note: If you’re answering this in a desktop/laptop and you find the worksheet too big, you can zoom out the screen. (For Windows users, you can scroll down the mouse wheel while pressing the Ctrl button on your keyboard.)

Did you enjoy answering these worksheets?

Here are some more you could do:

Montessori Botany Mastery Worksheets: Types and Parts of Plants
Montessori English Mastery Worksheets: Identifying Punctuation Marks
Montessori Geography Lesson & Worksheet: Landforms and Bodies of Water

Check out the Montessori-inspired resources available here for free.