Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Nouns of assemblage... assemble!

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

A gaggle of geese. A murder of crows. Nouns of assemblage are awesome and we talk about them for about 12 minutes in today's Short Stuff installment. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is short stuff.

There's a hairness of podcasters working together right now. I wonder what, yeah, I had a feeling that was coming. I just didn't know what you were gonna use. What would you have said? I don't know. I have no idea. I didn't think about it enough,

but I will say this. I didn't either. I know, you're quick with it, I'm not. Okay. I'm dim. No. I love this stuff so much. For a second, I thought we were talking

about foie gras again. No, I love this stuff. I love words, as you know. I love etymology, etymology, entomology, etymology. Etymology. I love where they come from. I love everything about the nouns of assemblage, which is what we're talking about,

which is if you've ever heard a murder of crows or a hairness of podcasters. A hairy of Henderson's. A hairy of Henderson's. That's called a noun of assemblage, which is a great band name, and I know I say that a lot, but that really is a great band name, the nouns of assemblage.

I think so, yeah, but what would it be? That feels like sort of shoegaze 90s to me. Okay, yeah, I was gonna say like kind of all college rock nouns of assemblage, opening for slow dive. Exactly, but that's what we're talking about here, and we're gonna talk about a lot of the specific ones, but also the story of how these came about

for the most part. Yeah, it turns out that there was a book that came out in 1486 that kicked off this kind of craze that lasted a little while that basically said, hey, you know how there's no such thing as teenagers or college yet? Well, we're gonna foreshadow all that by coming up with some word gags

with this book of St. Albans, which is basically a gentleman's guide to things like hunting, dog breeds, heraldry, sporting. Just that kind of like- Falconry. Falconry, I'm gonna leave that out. With that kind of like 15th century guide to manliness is basically what it was. Yeah, man, I want a copy of this.

I looked online to buy one. It's not affordable, but they do have a PDF. Okay, there you go. Because my first thought was, man, I'm gonna buy one of these and send it to John Hodgman. Like he would totally appreciate this. Make sure. But yeah, I might just print and bind the PDF

and send to him instead. Like I don't know, I think Hodgman would appreciate it. I don't think it would sink into him that you would like taking out a second mortgage on your house to buy him that book, you know? Not gonna happen. I think the PDF's gonna be just fine. Yeah, so we said nouns of assemblage.

They can also be called terms of venery. And they're linked to Norman culture. A lot of them came about from hunting and things like fishing and Falconry that we're talking about. Right, like venery actually means hunting. Oh, it does. Yeah, and that middle English.

It also means sex in middle English, which is a weird combo if you think about it. Like what kind of venery are you asking me for right now? Exactly, we're gonna be hunting foxes or hunting foxes. They say both. Well, this book has a lot of stuff in it, but there is a chapter called, and this is 1486. So there's a lot of whys where you would see eyes

like Chaucer style. So the companies of beasties and fowlies, which is a great chapter title. And they basically, it sounds like a bunch of dudes in the 1400s sat around, drank a lot of booze and had a good old time making up these nouns of assemblage. Right, which is really cute in a way. I mean, there's a lot of cuteness to the fact

that this was ever like a big deal. But some of the things that we talk about today, like a host of angels or a shock of corn or a panel of judges, like all of those come from, if not this book, the little kind of trend in making up nouns of assemblage that the book kicked off. Yeah, so you've got a sleuth of bears, a skulk of foxes.

It also tells you a little bit about the time in that both women and geese were gaggles. But if you have a group of wives, a group of married women together, they're in impatience of wives. Or noon-patience. In middle English. Seems kind of Dutch to me, but I guess

they're both derived from Germanic. Writers were a worship of writers, so they clearly thought a lot about their own talents. Congregation of churchgoers, a staff of employees, all those kind of came from this whole thing. So there was like a lot of words that we came up with or that this book put out or the trend came up with that we still use today.

But because they were terms of venerate, it was mostly meant for animals. So like the fact that humans were showing up in here at all was meant to be kind of like a joke, like a bit of satire, because the terms were meant to be nouns of assemblage for animals specifically. Yeah, and I think it became sort of a just popular trend

period outside of this book. And younger people started making these things up. And it just became a bit of a fad for a little while. It did. It was kind of like, it was like stuffing yourself into phone booths, 15th century style. That's right.

You want to take a break real quick and then we'll just come back and say some more of these because it's a lot of fun to do. Agreed. Okay. Cha cha cha cha cha cha cha cha cha cha cha cha cha cha cha On the podcast, paydude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

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so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, start it off, Chuck. All right, we'll go to birds. There are a lot of them for birds, because they hunted birds, and birds are everywhere.

So that's where we get murder of crows. I think that's one of the more common ones that people know. An unkindness of ravens, which I had heard before. And that, they kind of make a point here in this House of Works article that it really indicates like the gaggle of women and geese is how they felt about these things. So murder and unkindness for these two birds

that people don't really like, where you'll have a charm of finches, because they're super cute. That's one of my favorites. It's a good one. There's also a college of cardinals, which for some reason to me is really evocative. Like it really brings to mind a bright red cardinal

for some reason in my mind. It does. So I like that one. I think that's kind of part of it. It's supposed to really be evocative too, although some of them are clearly jokey. A mustering of storks, who knows, but it's worth mentioning, right?

Yeah. There's one that CS Lewis coin that's actually now considered in dictionaries as the proper way to say a group of owls. That's a parliament. Yeah, that one's pretty cool too. Yeah, way to go CS Lewis. Let me see here, you've got insects,

swarm of bees has stuck around. There are not a ton of nouns of assemblage for insects though. Business of flies, which I'd never heard of. If you have a bunch of lice, what's it called? A flock of lice, which is, that's just creepy. Yeah, I think they should have gone with a beard of bees. Yeah, that's not bad.

Instead of a swarm. And then there's some of the cutest ones are reserved for baby versions of our pets, domesticated animals. Like a kindle of kittens. I looked up the puppies one. You ready for this? It's a pittle of puppies.

And it's because of why you think it is. I'm glad I know that now because I often tell the story of when I got my dog who was no longer with us Buckley. I went to the shelter and there was a pittle of puppies all together in a little ball. And he's the only one who peeled away from that pittle and came over to me.

So I was like, you're the one. You're the one. But now I know, pittle of puppies, that's great. Agreed, it is pretty great. What else, Chuck? There's wild animals, a pride of lions, a wisdom of wombats, which I had not heard before. Yeah, I mean, you've also got dogs.

A pack of dogs was one, but dogs had a bunch of them because dogs were pets and they were hunting friends. And so they were, you could have a kennel of dogs, a pack of dogs, a cry or a mute of dogs. Yeah, those were just the hunting hounds in particular. There's also gang, legion, a meat of dogs. Yeah, a meat of dogs. It sounds like they're up to something, you know?

Yeah, and although you may have a kindle of kittens, once those kittens grow up, they become a clouder of, and that's C-L-O-W-D-E-R of cats, a clouder of cats. Which is better than a chowder of cats, really. God. I said some of the wild animals already, but if you notice, the flies group was called the business of flies.

There's also a business of ferrets. And really, it makes a lot of sense because it's business is derived from busyness, like something that's busy and moving about and everything, which really does apply to both a bunch of flies and a bunch of ferrets, too. So some of these were kind of right on. A gam of whales seems a little out of the blue.

Yeah, a prickle of hedgehogs makes sense. A bloat of hippos makes sense. Sure. But what about an obstinacy of buffalo? Yeah, that makes sense. They're kind of immovable, you know? I guess so. So I say, I propose that we stop for now,

but we start a spinoff podcast where every episode we just spend an hour saying these things, okay? Yeah, and if you wanna ever go on Jeopardy, I would recommend memorizing all of them. Yeah, agreed, agreed. And if you wanna know more about these, you can go on to HowStuffWorks.com

and look up this really great article. And since we said that, everybody, short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.