Spit Out Your Gum: A Singular Collection Of Plurals

Have you ever noticed that outside of square dancing and county fair eating (see a great video here), animals seem to have a lot more fun than humans? They get to fly, stink up the joint in an instant, spout, and lick themselves, when we, the alleged superior species, are left to spiral in doubt, become addicted to American Idol, and wait in line at the BMV. Sure we get to kill and eat them, but isn't that mere justice for the fear they strike in us? See what one bee does to an itch of picnic goers or what an itty bitty chipmunk does to a prim of classy ladies and I think you'll feel justified in roasting your next pig.

What really irks me, admittedly one of the weird dicts of wordlovers, about the whole animal/human inequality thing is that just about every single minuscule segment of the animal kingdom gets its own word for its plural (check out a great list here, my favorite being "an ostentation of peacocks" [see video below]), when we, diverse, every-fingerprint-is-unique, I'm-this-and-certainly-not-one-of-them, humans get nothing more than a few generic terms like "crowd" or "gang" or "bunch" (bunch being a word I once used in high school to describe a group of people [for lack of a more specific word, my point precisely] and my priest/teacher wrote in the margins, after circling the offensive "bunch": "save this word for bananas").

So, years ago, probably in search of a good diversion from grading papers or shaving, I started to compile, or really invent, a list of proper plurals for distinct groups of people. Well, to make a long, embarrassing and not too interesting story short, I nearly broke my two pinky fingers yesterday re-discovering this list while looking for something else (thankfully I use the phrase "nearly broke" but part of me is kind of nostalgic for the conversations I might have had trying to explain the sight of me with two pinky splints [if it's possible to feel nostalgic for something in the future which will not occur; now that feeling needs a word, kind of a negative image of saudade, maybe saudidnt]).

I confess that some of the entries on the list that follows mystify me, though I'm sure they made sense to me and made me chuckle when I wrote them years ago, and maybe you'll get them and chuckle now. I do have to give propers to one Ned Gulley through whose blog I discovered the animal plural list linked above. Now Ned (maybe being a math/science guy apparently) doesn't share my enthusiasm for the menagerie of animal plurals, but in criticizing the dicts who came up with all those great plurals, can't help but fall into the trap, calling them a "smarm of smarty-pants" (that's the spirit, Ned!).

Anyway, enjoy the list and feel free to use the terms as the need arises, no fees required.