A group of cats is appropriately known as a dowt. What Does “A Dowt of Cats” Mean? “Dowt” is best understood as a spelling variant of “dout” rather than a wholly separate word, the kind of small regional or dialectal drift that shows up often in old English word lists, where a single term could … Read more
A group of cats is appropriately known as a glaring. What Does “A Glaring of Cats” Mean? Of all the cat collective nouns, “glaring” is probably the most immediately vivid, and it’s easy to see why. Cats are intense starers by nature, and multiple cats fixing their attention on the same thing, a bird outside … Read more
A group of cats is appropriately known as a kindle. What Does “A Kindle of Cats” Mean? “Kindle” is the older of two collective nouns on this site that both essentially mean a group of kittens born together, the other being the more familiar “litter.” The word comes from an archaic use of “kindle” as … Read more
A group of cats is appropriately known as a litter. What Does “A Litter of Cats” Mean? “Litter” is the modern, widely understood term for a group of kittens born to the same mother in the same birth, and unlike some entries on this list, there’s nothing obscure about it, it’s simply the standard word … Read more
A group of cats is appropriately known as a clowder. What Does “A Clowder of Cats” Mean? “Clowder” is the most historically established collective noun for domestic cats, likely derived from “clodder” or “clutter,” old dialect words describing a clotted or clumped-together mass. It’s one of the few cat-related collective nouns with a reasonably traceable … Read more
A group of resting whales is called a float, related to the behavior called “logging.”
“These look delicious!” A hungry horde of gerbils has discovered the farmer’s lettuce crop. What Does “A Horde of Gerbils” Mean? “Horde” borrows a word historically associated with large, loosely organized nomadic groups of people, and applied to gerbils, it leans into their tendency to live in sizable, tightly packed family colonies within elaborate burrow … Read more
Everyone has a job in this horse family, and naturally the colt gets the rake. A Rake of Colts! What Does “A Rake of Colts” Mean? “Rake” appears across several old English collective noun lists for young or loosely organized horse groups, including colts and mules, and its precise origin is uncertain. One plausible root … Read more
When a group of gnus gets together, apparently anything is possible. An Implausibility of Gnus! What Does “An Implausibility of Gnus” Mean? “Implausibility” is one of the more openly playful entries on any collective noun list, and it’s built on a pun rather than any real behavioral or historical basis: “gnu” and “new” are homophones, … Read more