What Does “A Flange of Baboons” Mean?
“Flange” has an unusually well-documented, and unusually recent, origin story compared to most entries on this list. It gained widespread popularity after a UK nature television segment used it, memorably and specifically, to describe a large male-led group during coverage of primates, and the term spread rapidly online afterward, repeated widely enough that it’s now firmly embedded in popular collective-noun lists.
Whether “flange” has a genuinely old, independently documented history as a traditional collective noun, or whether it largely took off because of that one broadcast moment, is a point of real debate among word enthusiasts, and we don’t want to overstate its pedigree either way. What’s certain is that it’s now one of the most widely repeated and requested baboon collective nouns online, a good example of how modern media can genuinely mint, or at least massively popularize, a piece of collective-noun folklore in real time.
Example: “The nature documentary’s use of ‘a flange of baboons’ turned the term into an internet favorite almost overnight.”
Related: Collective Nouns for Mammals · What Is a Group of Baboons Called?