Why do we have those weird ways to describe a group of things and how do they come about?

Question

A pride of lions
A murder of crow
A pack of wolves

Etc

In: 4

Answer 1

This is an example of fashionable language. In the late middle ages the French nobility who ruled England at the time started hunting for sport. And as you might imagine with a French speaking noble class and “vulgar” speaking Germanic commoners language was used very actively to show status. Not only would the nobles use French terms for animals instead of Germanic terms. So they hunted beef and venison rather then ox and deer. But they would also come up with new terms for collective nouns to sound even more posh.