A pride of lions? A streak of tigers? A school of porpoises? A gaggle of geese?...(or should that be a skein[e]?...)

Who decides, how are these names derived, what is the etymology here and is there a definitive/near definitive list anywhere of all collective nouns? For years I have wondered...

....a murder of crows...???

Ritz, here is a list of all the collective nouns.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/List%20of%20collective%20nouns

Interesting question, Ritzmar.

According to this website collective nouns"originated in an English hunting tradition (of uncertain origin) for giving poetic names to prey. (The phrase 'terms of venery' is an archaic synonym for collective nouns - 'venery' in this context meaning the "act of hunting"). For this reason, most collective nouns refer to animals. This tradition dates back to at least the 15th century. Many of these original collective nouns are archaic: a 'harass of horses' doesn't seem to have been used much since the 1400s".

This webiste tells us that "many come from a book called The Book of St Albans which in appeared in the very early days of printing in England (around 1486) and the bit containing these collective nouns is attributed to one Dame Julia (or Juliana) Barnes".

The Book of St Albans was written in three parts, on hawking, hunting and heraldry, so that ties in with the "hunting" orirgin. You can read more about it here.

It is said that when attending a reception in honour of several former British Prime Ministers, Harold Macmillan was asked what the appropriate collective noun for them would be. His reply was "A lack of principals!".

These are quite interesting too!
A 'modern' list of collective nouns. Quite true, some of them

http://www.btinternet.com/~knutty.knights/nouns.txt

Wow, Jenny & Karrow! All revealed at a couple of strokes...what a competence of experts! Many thanks...

Having had more time today to peruse the websites which you two have offered, I have found them really useful. All my queries are now answered. Again, many thanks for the help!...

Has anyone explained skein and gaggle? A skein of geese is flying. A gaggle is not. To be more precise, a gaggle is only of farmyard geese; these do not fly, obviously. There would be liitle profit in a skein of farmyard geese

Just re-reading Powell's 'Rivers of Blood', Fred; will reply to your offering in 'News' very soon.