Dan Q

Day: 10 July 2023

Solitary Nouns

The other night, Ruth and I were talking about collective nouns (y’know, like a herd of cows or a flock of sheep) and came up with the somewhat batty idea of solitary nouns. Like collective nouns, but for a singular subject (one cow, sheep, or whatever).

Then, we tried to derive what the words could be. Some of the results write themselves.1

Captioned photos showing "a HERD of COWS" and "a HER of COW".
Mooving right on…
Captioned photos showing "a PRIDE of LIONS" and "a PROUD of LION".
I’d be lion if I said I wasn’t proud of this one.
Captioned photos showing "a COLONY of BEES" and "a COLONIST of BEE".
I’m pollen out all the collective nouns now!

Some of them involve removing one or more letters from the collective noun to invent a shorter word to be the solitary noun.

Captioned photos showing "an ARMY of ANTS" and "an ARM of ANT". The latter picture shows an ant lifting a stick many times its size.
They stay healthy by working out and getting vaccinated, both of which give them tough anty bodies.
Captioned photos showing "a COVEN of WITCHES" and "an OVEN of WITCH" (the latter picture shows a scene from Handsel & Gretel in which the witch is pushed into the oven).
The sound of an oven is a cackling: “When shall I one meet again?”
Captioned photos showing "a MURMURATION of STARLINGS" and "a MURMUR of STARLING".
Eventually it grows up into a star, which are a lot louder.2
For others, we really had to stretch the concept by mutating words in ways that “felt right”, using phoenetic spellings, or even inventing collective nouns so that we could singularise them:
Captioned photos showing "a GAGGLE of GEESE" and "a GIGGLE of GOOSE".
For more goose-related wordplay, take a gander at this blog post from a few years back.
Captioned photos showing "a ROUND of DRINKS" and "a ROW of DRINK": the latter photo shows a man drinking in a bar while fighting another man.
Getting smashed doesn’t have to end with bumps and boozers.3
Captioned photos showing "an 1812 of CANNONS" and "a 1 of CANNON".
Blast but not least.

Did I miss any obvious ones?

Footnotes

1 Also consider “parliament of owls” ➔ “politician of owl”, “troop of monkeys” ➔ “soldier of monkey”, “band of gorillas” ➔ “musician of gorilla”. Hey… is that where that band‘s name come from?

2 Is “cluster of stars” ➔ “luster of star” anything?

3 Ruth enjoyed the singularised “a low of old bollock”, too.

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