CIOL Vice President David Crystal writes on the recent CIOL competition to select a suitable collective noun for linguists 

The Origins of Collective Nouns in English 

I imagine all languages have ways to talk about groups of animals, people, and things, but I doubt any can match English for the range and variety of collective nouns that this language has accumulated over the centuries. 

Some, such as a flock of birds, a herd of cows, and a swarm of bees, date from Anglo-Saxon times. There weren't many of them then, so they were used for all kinds of things - for instance, people talked about a herd of cranes, wrens, deer, swans, gnats, and more.

These old collectives are so familiar now that we don’t think twice about them.

But we do think twice about the unexpected ones that were coined later, such as a murder of crows, a parliament of owls, and an unkindness of ravens. They have an obscure origin. Many are recorded for the first time in The Book of St Albans, one of the first English printed books, dated 1486. It was compiled by Dame Juliana, the prioress of Sopwell nunnery near St Albans in Hertfordshire. It contains a list of some 200 collective nouns.

Playful inventions?

Some are traditional expressions, such as herd. But most seem to be playful inventions. This is where we find an unkindness of ravens, a muster of peacocks, a watch of nightingales, a charm of goldfinches, and dozens more. And the list goes well beyond animals. We find a diligence of messengers, a superfluity of nuns, a doctrine of doctors, a sentence of judges, a prudence of vicars, and a nonpatience of wives. Several others appeared in 15th century hunting manuals. Many of these expressions still appear today – particularly in literature and journalism, and of course what would a British pub quiz be without reference to an obscure collective noun or two!

Why do I call them 'playful'? Because coining collectives is a game people still happily play today, and human nature hasn't changed that much in 500 years. A great deal of entertainment can be derived from thinking up the funniest way of describing a group of 'X' - where X can be anything from astronauts to zoologists. What's the best collective noun for politicians, or undertakers, or estate agents? Competitions have produced some fine examples.

The Story of English - some collector's items!   

I collected as many as I could find a few years ago for my Story of English in 100 Words.

Here are some of the winners:

an absence of waiters,

a rash of dermatologists,

a clutch of car mechanics,

a vat of chancellors,

a bout of estimates,

a mass of priests,

and (my favourite, for its simplicity) a lot of auctioneers.

And still they come.

More recently I've encountered a crash of software, an annoyance of mobile phones, and a bond of British secret agents.

CIOL's competition

Now the linguists are playing the game. Last year, the Chartered Institute of Linguists launched a competition to find a collective noun for linguists. What began as a light-hearted competition inspired by Honorary President Jean Coussins, has culminated in a celebration of linguistic creativity, as CIOL members, the wider public, and readers of The Linguist magazine sent in their entries of words to describe language professionals. “

This is all about fun – but with a serious message too”, said Baroness Coussins. “Creativity, wit and wordplay are skills that linguists have in abundance, thanks to their exposure to other languages and cultures.” 

The competition aimed to create a term worthy of joining the many memorable collective nouns in English. Here are just a few of the entries: an alphabet, a babble, a Babel, a chatter, a lexicon, and a polyphony of linguists.

The winner? A Glot of Linguists

The winner was a glot of linguists. Whilst not as lyrical as some, it has good roots – the Greek for 'tongue' – and it already describes linguistic groups as in the multilingual polyglots and the lonelier monoglots.

CIOL can be proud of the fact that they have created a collective first. You'll have noticed that all the examples above are whole words. In the formula 'an X of Y', X is always a noun, in the singular, in its full form. There has never, to my knowledge, been a case where X is a part of a word. Glot is what in linguistics is called a combining form. These are word elements that have a specific meaning but don’t occur on their own, such as bio- and tele- initially, -graph and -scope finally - and, of course, -glot.

A glot of linguists. It rolls off the tongue very nicely, with the l alliteration, and it has a neat semantic association with lot - which is what collectives are all about.

A good choice.

David works from his home in Holyhead, North Wales, as a writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster. Very widely know for his research and English language studies he has written over 100 books on English and other linguistic themes. He is a CIOL Vice President. His full biography is here