AskOxford: Collective Terms for Animals
A useful section of the Oxford Dictionaries site for settling arguments and checking your pub quiz Q&A. We were having a heated discussion regarding the correct collective noun for a group of hippopotamuses. Yes, sad, isn’t it? We had a laptop and mobile coms but a Google search came up with all sorts of terms, some of them hotly disputed. Where do we Brits go to in situations such as this? Answer – the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Unfortunately, we were not in a venue where I could access my own multi volume hard copy but AskOxford came up with the answer, or rather answers. For the record, a group of hippos can be a pod, a bloat, a herd or a school. Now you know!
a WAVE of stingray!
Chris Hall