cete of badgers

[prettygoodword]

Theme week! Collective nouns for animals. Which could fill whole semesters, but I'm picking words not otherwise used for other things.


cete - n., a company of badgers.


Or so the American Heritage Dictionary puts it. Possibly from Medieval Latin cetus, assembly, from Latin coetus, a coming together, variant of coitus. Nature is such the perv sometimes.

---L.

Comments

collective

[flw.livejournal.com]

I love collective nouns. "Murder" of crows. "Rafter" of turkeys. I always wonder about the origins. Some of them seem made up.

Re: collective

[fordmadoxfraud.livejournal.com]

You mean like all words?

Re: collective

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

I think he means consciously made up in their present form, as opposed to borrowed or inherited.

---L.