An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition

“I am madly in love with collective nouns! They make language so colorful and ticklish. . . . [ An Exaltation of Larks ] possess[es] an embarrassment of riches (wink wink!).” —Lupita Nyong’o, The New York Times “James Lipton has performed all speakers of English a great service. If there were an English Academy, he would surely deserve election.” —Raymond Sokolov, Newsweek “A great, great gift book . . . that you will end up keeping for yourself.” —Neil Simon “A clap of hands, a chorus of approval, a hint of envy.” —Larry Gelbart An "exaltation of larks"? Yes! And a "leap of leopards", a "parliament of owls", an "ostentation of peacocks", a "smack of jellyfish", and a "murder of crows"! For those who have ever wondered if the familiar "pride of lions" and "gaggle of geese" were only the tip of a linguistic iceberg, James Lipton has provided the definitive answer: here are hundreds of equally pithy, and often poetic, terms unearthed by Mr. Lipton in the Books of Venery that were the constant study of anyone who aspired to the title of gentleman in the fifteenth century. When Mr. Lipton's painstaking research revealed that five hundred years ago the terms of venery had already been turned into the Game of Venery, he embarked on an odyssey that has given us a "slouch of models", a "shrivel of critics", an "unction of undertakers", a "blur of Impressionists", a "score of bachelors", and a "pocket of quarterbacks". This ultimate edition of An Exaltation of Larks is Mr. Lipton's brilliant answer to the assault on language and literacy in the last decades of the twentieth century. In it you will find more than 1,100 resurrected or newly minted contributions to that most endangered of all species, our language, in a setting of 250 witty, beautiful, and remarkably apt engravings. James Lipton was the creator, executive producer, writer, and host of Inside the Actors Studio , which has been seen in eighty-nine million homes in America and in 125 countries and has received fourteen Emmy nominations. He was the author of the novel Mirrors , which he then adapted and produced for the screen, and of the American literary perennial An Exaltation of Larks , and has written the book and lyrics of two Broadway musicals. He was a vice president of the Actors Studio and the founder and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University, he received three honorary PhDs, France’s Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres , and has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Emmy by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Part II: The Known This list contains some of the terms of venery that are a part of our living speech. Many of them are as old as the terms in Parts III and IV, but since we still use them, I have separated them from their brothers and sisters. xa0 They may be so familiar that we say or read them without thinking: they have lost their poetry for us. But step back for a moment from some of these familiar terms—A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS, A PRIDE OF LIONS, A LITTER OF PUPS (plague! pride! litter! )—and perhaps their aptness and daring will reappear. xa0 So with all the terms in this part: we begin on familiar ground, to sharpen our senses by restoring the magic to the mundane. xa0 *** xa0 A SCHOOL OF FISH As noted earlier, school was a corruption of shoal , a term still in use for specific fish. C. E. Hare, in The Language of Field Sports , quotes John Hodgkin on this term arguing that school and shoal are in fact variant spellings of the same word, but Eric Partridge, I think correctly, sees them coming from two different roots, the former from ME scole , deriving from the Latin schola , a school, and the latter from the OE sceald , meaning shallow. I think it is obvious that in the lexicon of venery shoal was meant and school is a corruption. xa0 A CATCH OF FISH Deceased. xa0 A PACK OF DOGS xa0 A LITTER OF PUPS xa0 A MONTH OF SUNDAYS xa0 A MOUNTAIN OF DEBT xa0 A HILL OF BEANS xa0 A DOSE OF SALTS xa0 A PRIDE OF LIONS One of the oldest venereal terms, antedating even the English lists in the French lyons orgeuilleux . The earliest English manuscript, Egerton , and The Book of St. Albans both have a Pryde of Lyons . xa0 A HERD OF ELEPHANTS xa0 A NEST OF VIPERS Also, generation of vipers , Jesus’s characterization of the multitude that came to be baptized. “O generation of vipers , who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Luke, 3:7 . xa0 A BARREL OF MONKEYS xa0 A FIELD OF RACEHORSES xa0 A HERD OF HORSES xa0 A STRING OF PONIES xa0 A BROOD OF HENS xa0 A RUN OF POULTRY xa0 A FLOCK OF SHEEP xa0 A TEAM OF OXEN Dating from the fifteenth century Harley Manuscript . xa0 A CLOUD OF GRASSHOPPERS ( Or GNATS) xa0 A SWARM OF BEES xa0 A NEST OF WASPS xa0 A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS xa0 A COLONY OF ANTS xa0 AN ARMY OF CATERPILLARS xa0 A BUNCH OF GRAPES xa0 A HAND OF BANANAS xa0 A SHEAF OF WHEAT Sheaves are stalks of grain tied together. xa0 A SHOCK OF CORN A shock is a pile of sheaves of grain or stalks of corn propped in a field. See thrave of threshers . xa0 A BENCH OF JUDGES xa0 A COLLEGE OF CARDINALS xa0 A BOARD OF TRUSTEES xa0 A FIELD OF RUNNERS xa0 A GANG OF LABORERS xa0 A LINE OF SOVEREIGNS xa0 AN ORDER OF PEERS xa0 A COVEN OF WITCHES (FEMALE) xa0 A CONGERIES OF WITCHES (MALE) xa0 A GATHERING OF CLANS xa0 A POSSE OF VIGILANTES From the Latin posse comitatus , power of the county, those citizens subject to callup by an English sheriff in times of trouble. In America’s Old West the term—and custom—were given considerable latitude. xa0 A BEVY OF BEAUTIES This is one of the few terms of venery whose origin is uncertain. Hodgkin says, “There is no satisfactory etymology for the word ‘bevy.’” Partridge marks it o.o.o.—of obscure origin; but hazards the guess that it derives from the Old French bevée , a drink or drinking. xa0 A BAND OF MEN Hence also band for a group of musicians. xa0 A SLATE OF CANDIDATES Doubtless deriving from the time when nominees’ names were chalked on one. xa0 A CONSTITUENCY OF VOTERS xa0 A COLLEGE OF ELECTORS xa0 A CONGREGATIO OF PEOPLE xa0 A PASSEL OF BRATS An American term, of course. Donald Adams went looking for this one, finding it finally in Wentworth’s American Dialect Dictionary as “hull passel of young ones,” “a passel o’ hogs,” etc., but no etymology is given. A Southern friend assures me, however, that passel is simply “parcel” in a regional dialect. xa0 A HOST OF ANGELS An interesting term this. J. Donald Adams, in The Magic and Mystery of Words , says, ‘‘Angels in any quantity may be referred to only as a host. The word’s title to that distinction is clear enough; host derives from the Latin hostis , meaning enemy, and hence came to mean an army. It was presumably applied to angels as the warriors of God.” xa0 A HAIL OF GUNFIRE xa0 A FUSILLADE OF BULLETS xa0 A NEST OF MACHINE GUNS xa0 A BARRAGE OF SHELLS xa0 A BAPTISM OF FIRE xa0 A QUIVER OF ARROWS At the beginning of this section, I suggested we step back from these familiar terms, to experience them anew. This candidate for reevaluation can be found as a quiver of arrows in Psalters dated as early as 1300; which tells us that more than seven hundred years ago someone, who could have used the familiar thirteenth-century words case or scabbard, arbitrarily and whimsically turned quiver into a noun—and a timeless portrait of an arrow trembling in its target. xa0 A CHORUS OF COMPLAINT xa0 A TISSUE OF LIES Also, pack . xa0 A DEN OF THIEVES xa0 A CAN OF WORMS xa0 A HEAD OF STEAM xa0 A FLEET OF SHIPS xa0 A SET OF CHINA Since, as noted on the preceding page, the purpose of this section is to restore the magic to the mundane by reexamining words we take for granted, let’s see what happens when we put our magnifying glass over the commonest of these common terms, set . Any surprises? Yes: the Oxford English Dictionary devotes 23 pagesxa0to the word! “The complete collection of the ‘pieces’ composing a suite of furniture, a service of china, a clothing outfit, or the like,” descended from the Old French sette , is there, as is a set of badgers (q.v.)—but so are hundreds of other definitions, nuances, roots and tributaries. The point of this note is that the intrepid semanticist in search of any word’s meaning may find himself hacking his way through an Amazonian jungle of possibilities. And that, as every page of this book attests, is the great and everlasting glory of the vast, supple, subtle English language. xa0 A PEAL OF BELLS xa0 A FLIGHT OF STAIRS xa0 A PATTER OF FOOTSTEPS xa0 A ROUND OF DRINKS xa0 A ROPE OF PEARLS xa0 A BOUQET OF FLOWERS xa0 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES xa0 A CONSTELLATION OF STARS xa0 A PENCIL OF LINES A proper contemporary group term in mathematics. xa0 A BILL OF PARTICCLARS xa0 A MESS OF POTTAGE Read more