Are These True, Or Made Up?

[The-Wolf]

I was looking for collective nouns for other animals and came accros these
do you think they are 'recognised' as being true collective nouns for the species of fish?

Archer fish Company
Barracuda Battery
Bass Shoal, Fleet
Butterfly fish School
Dogfish Troop
Dragonet fish Swarm
Eels Swarm
Flying fish Glide
Goldfish Troubling
Herrings Glean, Army, Shoal
Minnows Stream
Porcupine fish Cluster
Rainbow fish Party
Salmon Bind
Sea Horses Herd
Sticklebacks Spread
Swordfish Flotilla
Trout Hover

I'm not convinced
take a glide of flying fish, sounds correct but is it really?

 

[Davey Jones]

Surely they have to be made up

 

[andywg]

Easily believable. After all, one has a murder of crows and a business of ferrets.

 

[demonmagus]

and a mischief of rats lol

 

[OohFeeshy]

To be honest, you can call them what you like- not like theres anything official saying you have to call them that. We could all start saying a ballet of rhinos, if we liked- wouldn't make it wrong.

 

[Bignose]

To be honest, you can call them what you like- not like theres anything official saying you have to call them that. We could all start saying a ballet of rhinos, if we liked- wouldn't make it wrong.

Except it is a crash of rhinos

There are proper terms for groups of animals, whether you want to make them up or not. And the official document is the Oxford English Dictionary.

 

[OohFeeshy]

Except it is a crash of rhinos

Which I know full well, I was making a point.

There are proper terms for groups of animals, whether you want to make them up or not. And the official document is the Oxford English Dictionary.

Proper by whose standards? Many of the words in the Oxford dictionary today aren't considered proper words. Besides which, words get into the dictionary through common usage- reverting back to my original example, if 'a ballet of rhinos' became common and frequent in usage, no doubt that too would earn it's place in the dictionary.

 

[andywg]

Proper by whose standards? Many of the words in the Oxford dictionary today aren't considered proper words. Besides which, words get into the dictionary through common usage- reverting back to my original example, if 'a ballet of rhinos' became common and frequent in usage, no doubt that too would earn it's place in the dictionary.

It is more than just common usage. The use of 'Google' as a verb is still not correct English and included in the Oxford Dictionary. An you would be amazed how many words that don't seem proper at school are used quite commonly in the 'real' world. Start working near law or medicine and you will begin using all sorts of words such as notwithstanding, therein and expeditious.

Enlgish as it is spoken and English as it is written are two different beasts. Collective pronouns are more relevant to the written word.