Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Anthropomorphic Collective Nouns

I totally stole this off an email someone sent me but I found it so hilarious that I had to share it on my blog.  Most of us are familiar with certain ways in which we name animal groups even if we never did know that in doing so we were using anthropomorphic collective nouns.  So for instance a herd of cows, a school of fish, a flock of chickens, and a gaggle of geese are all collective nouns that are familiar.  Less familiar are a pride of lions, a mob of kangaroos, an exultation of doves (love that one!), a rookery of penguins, a troop of chimpanzees, a murder of crows, and presumably because they look so wise, a parliament of owls.  
Now, consider a group of baboons: They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least intelligent of all primates.  And do you know what we call that?  
A CONGRESS of baboons!  There's your laugh of the day!  Sadly, too much of what goes on in politics today is sheer monkey business or should I say baboon business!  Many thanks to whomever thought of this in the first place!



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