47 LANGUAGE/GRAMMAR/COLLECTIVE NOUNS

Some collective nouns are mundane, for example ‘a bunch of bananas’. Some however are inspired, like ‘a murder of crows’ or ‘an ambush of widows’. Most have been lost to time and some have been banned. ‘A feltch of homosexuals’ dropped out of common parlance in 1984, due largely to the rise of the Aids epidemic and a distancing from unsavoury practices. ‘A munch of Lezzers’ however is still widely used in North Wales and parts of Shropshire. ‘A twitch of Spastics’, ‘a hastiness of Flyds’ and ‘an arsecunt of Tourette Sydrome sufferers’ never caught on due to people’s general reluctance to embrace the issues involved. ‘A tackle of Trannies’ is commonly applied but only in specialist circles.
Both midgets and dwarves demand the exclusive right to ‘Pantheon’, a feud that has lasted centuries. The Midgets think the Dwarves should have ‘shrubbery’ and the Dwarves think it should be ‘a clump of Midgets’. Understandably, their choice of collective nouns for each other has only escalated the tension. It culminated in the Dwigit wars of 1905 where millions of little people were killed by circus cannons, collapsing clown cars and when the confetti from the ‘bucket of water’ gag was replaced with anthrax. Pedantic nomenclature caused such futility.
Surprisingly, the collective noun for collective nouns is ‘a Mavis’. No one knows why.