A group of bears is occasionally known as a company. What Does “A Company of Bears” Mean? “Company” is one of the more generic old collective terms in English, applied loosely to several kinds of animals over the centuries rather than coined specifically for bears. It simply means a group keeping one another’s company, a … Read more
A group of bears is occasionally known as a drift. What Does “A Drift of Bears” Mean? “Drift” usually describes snow piled up by the wind, and it’s an apt, wintry image for a term applied to bears: several bears settling into the same snowy landscape as the cold sets in. Like most of the … Read more
A group of bears is playfully known as a hug. What Does “A Hug of Bears” Mean? “Hug” is one of the more whimsical entries on the bear collective-noun list, and it almost certainly grew out of the popular idiom “bear hug” rather than any documented field observation. A real bear hug is a defensive … Read more
A group of bears is appropriately known as a maul. What Does “A Maul of Bears” Mean? “Maul” is a blunt, physical word, and it points to the tension involved whenever normally solitary bears are forced into close proximity. Bears aren’t social animals by nature; most species live and hunt alone, and adult males in … Read more
A group of bears is appropriately known as a pack. What Does “A Pack of Bears” Mean? “Pack” is a term borrowed from far more social animals, wolves especially, and applying it to bears is a bit of a stretch biologically. Bears don’t hunt cooperatively or maintain the kind of coordinated social groups that define … Read more
A group of bears is appropriately known as a sloth. What Does “A Sloth of Bears” Mean? “Sloth” is the older and more historically documented of the two similar-sounding bear collective nouns (the other being “sleuth”), generally believed to reference bears’ slow, lumbering movement, or possibly their reputation for spending long stretches inactive, especially heading … Read more
A group of gorillas is appropriately known as a band. What Does “A Band of Gorillas” Mean? “Band” describes gorilla social life about as accurately as a collective noun can. Gorillas live in close, stable family groups typically led by a single dominant adult male, known as a silverback for the distinctive patch of silver-gray … Read more
A group of gorillas is appropriately known as a woop. What Does “A Woop of Gorillas” Mean? “Woop” is one of the more unusual and least documented collective nouns on this entire site, and we’d rather tell you plainly that we couldn’t verify a clear, sourced origin than invent a tidy explanation. It doesn’t appear … Read more
