A Murder of Crows

Collective Noun

In linguistics, a collective noun refers to a collection of things taken as a whole. Most collective nouns in everyday speech are mundane and not specific to just one kind, such as the word “group”, which is applied to “people” in the phrase “a group of people”, but is also applied to “dogs” in the phrase “a group of dogs”. Other collective nouns are specific to one kind, especially terms of venery, which identify specific groups of animals. For example, “pride” as a term of venery always refers to lions, never to dogs or cows.

One time on #BanterWithBooksellers we had a bit of a laugh and listed all the stuff that we have received (and like receiving) from publishers to help market their books and there were a few I won’t include (such as brown envelopes full of cash), this prompted the decision that the collective noun for booksellers must be “A Blag of Booksellers.”

These were the most popular items:

• chocolate (food in general)
• badges/pins
• stickers
• lanyards
• tote bags
• posters
• postcards
• bookmarks
• pencils/stationery
• t-shirts
• bunting
• fridge magnets
• snow globes for wintery books
• inserts with social media details, etc
• book-themed thingies

p.s. a box of glitter that came with a book recently was not on that list, finding that for years thank you 😉