What Does “A Horde of Hamsters” Mean?
“Horde” is a playful, slightly ironic choice for hamsters, given that most pet hamster species are famously, almost aggressively solitary in the wild and in captivity, often fighting if housed together as adults. The word likely gets its charm from a mismatch between image and reality: “horde” conjures a large, teeming group, while a real hamster’s instinct is usually to defend its burrow fiercely against any intruder, related or not.
Wild hamsters do dig extensive, multi-chambered burrows and can produce large litters, sometimes a dozen or more pups at once, which may be where the “horde” association actually comes from: not a group of adults living together, but a single mother’s short-lived litter before the young disperse to claim territories of their own.
Example: “A horde of hamster pups tumbled over each other in the nest before eventually scattering to dig burrows of their own.”
Related: Collective Nouns for Mammals