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Comment by canjobear | Hacker News Reader

Exactly: experts do not decide what a group of crows is called, regular people do. And I have never in my life heard anyone seriously refer to a murder of crows, except in the context "Hey did you know this cool piece of trivia? A group of crows is called a murder!" Furthermore if you actually used "murder of crows" in a real context people would likely be confused. Therefore, I conclude "murder of crows" is not really part of the English language.

Another way of thinking about it...imagine you are writing a textbook about the English language for people learning it as a second language. You want to instruct them about how to use English in the real world. Would you tell them to refer to a group of crows as a "murder"?

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I used the term in a conversation last week. The birds in question were actually Tarsier Ravens, but the term murder of Crows was most appropriate, and understood completely by the person I was talking with.

This might be generational, I'm well read and the other party was of an older generation.

We all live in valleys and it's hard to see over yonder hills, to other worlds and peoples ..

> The birds in question were actually Tarsier Ravens, but the term murder of Crows was most appropriate, and understood completely by the person I was talking with.

So you used a completely "wrong" collective noun (a group of ravens is supposedly a "parliament") and were understood just as well as if you'd used the "correct" one? Sounds like you've proven the article's point.

I'm rather partial to an unkindness of ravens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unkindness_of_ravens

As am I!

I'm also perplexed by the parent's reference to a "parliament" of ravens. Not only have I personally ever only seen it in context of owls, the article actually uses "a parliament of owls" as an example itself.

I'm sure that in certain contexts you might even throw in a totally bogus, invented term and a human would be perfectly able to match this with the assumption that you're referring to "a group" just from context. Tell someone you saw a "rowlow of ravens all flying in unison" and they'll just assume you used a neologism, perhaps with some doubt or uncertainly in the back of the mind.

The weird thing about the "murder of crows" or a "parliament of rooks" is the use of such common words, especially slightly shocking ones like "murder". This raises more eyebrows and feels more like a joke for the unaware.

A "wisdom of wombats", a "lamentation of swans"... An "ambush of tigers" would certainly be interpreted as the act of ambushing.

Look at the list here [0] and you'll find it very random.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animal_names

> I'm sure that in certain contexts you might even throw in a totally bogus, invented term and a human would be perfectly able to match this with the assumption that you're referring to "a group"

I'd go as far to venture that in all contexts you could throw in some made up term. It will be understood by the other person, however they may think that you're a bit strange for referring to "an orgy of ants" for instance.

That's the funny thing about language; it's highly contextual, and humans are great at filling in the gaps based on context if there is some part of a communication that is not understood, miscommunicated or not even heard.

>I'm well read

The band Counting Crows has a song, Murder of One. It's how I came across this "trivia".

What's a tarsier raven? I can't find anything describing that common name; I get back results about tarsiers and results about ravens, but nothing that combines the two. I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be in any of my bird books, which mostly only cover North America, but it's a surprise for Google to likewise come up empty.

My apologies on looking it up they are in fact Crows, Torresian Crows ..

Here’s the thing....

> Furthermore if you actually used "murder of crows" in a real context people would likely be confused.

You mix with different people than I. 90% of my friends would understand that seamlessly - and those that didn't would recognize it as a term of venery from context.

"term of venery" is also not a noun cluster that anybody uses.

Counterexample: GP comment, unless scubbo is not a person.

Gadzooks, you've found me out!

But it's defined specifically in the second paragraph of the original article, so it makes sense to use the same terminology in discussion comments, right?

the people who keep this issue alive are people who take a delight in it, it being something that people like me think is really stupid. When I hear murder of crows or the term "terms of venery", I roll my eyes and throw up a little in my mouth.

It's not a big issue to me, but my impulse upon hearing about the topic is simply the opposite of the people who keep it alive. It's more twee than is an American, such as myself, using the term twee.

I would argue that the people (such as myself) who enjoy word-trivia like this are not "keeping the issue alive", because they don't believe there's an issue. If you don't want to use those words, then you are free to (not) do so. I enjoy knowing them, and I'll keep using them on the _extremely_ rare occasion that they're relevant.

It's the people who tell the others that they are wrong (whichever side of the debate they're on) who make it an issue.

I only recognised it by association with "venereal diseases", and even then I had to look up the definition, which showed I was wrong in this case.

I think there is something to be said for flowery language, but obviously there needs to be a balance struck between it and comprehensibility.

i am a little saddened by your downvotes after deciding to actually check the definition of 'venery', without making more assumptions on top of your assumptions, to find that the first definition is in fact 'sexual indulgence'. the second definition being 'hunting' thereby making your mistaken definition a very reasonable mistake.

Agreed! But I assert that people would still recognize "a murder of crows" as such, even if they don't have a name for it - just like I would expect someone to be able to recognize an equilateral triangle as such, even if they don't know the name for it.

Actually, English is not my native language, I started learning it in primary school in fifth grade (at around ten).

Unfortunately, teachers do teach that and there was a test for the various group names, like a school of fish, a pod of whales, a parliament of owls, etc. And yes, the murder of crows was included. That was in secondary school, though, so admittedly at a higher level of education but it is taught and tested against.

There are some commonly used which you should know. A school of fish, for example. A flock can be used for both birds and sheep, and it is very frequently used. A pod exists but is less common.

These rarer ones can frequently be replaced with a commonly used one, and often are. I think most people would talk about a 'flock of crows'.

> A pod exists but is less common.

It may be less common, but it's where Kubernetes got its term 'pod.' Docker's mascot is a whale, Kubernetes manages groups of related Docker containers … pod!

Maybe it's regional? I've known, used and heard 'murder of crows' for as long as I can remember. Admittedly it's not every day that I have conversations about crows, but the term has never seemed novel to me and I've never had somebody explain it to me as trivia.

It seems the term "murder of crows" has recently become as popular as "flock of crows"

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_end=2019&year_sta...

If you write "murder of crows" a few more times, it will totally convince people it's not a thing.

Actually, just last night I said to my wife, (jokingly) "Oh look, a murder of pigeons!", and she was not confused. English is pretty flexible, and it's changing everyday.

I'm not sure I'd refer to crows, a murder of or a flock of, in a beginner's textbook on the English language. I don't think crows are commonplace enough in every day conversation to justify their inclusion.

If I was needing to refer to a group of crows in this textbook then I'd refer to them by their proper collective noun, a murder of, because that would be correct.

Flock, pack and herd are found in "beginner" English books all the time. Ask the nearest three year old to fetch the animal/farm/zoo book.

Those three words also stand on their own. "That herd looks unsettled" "Can you hear the pack howling?" etc.

I've yet to hear "murder" without "of crows" following it, so I reject it as the normal word.

(Native English speaker.)

I disagree. What about “Experts do not decide what is and isn’t a programming language, regular people do, so if they say HTML is one, it is”?

I think it is more that there are two terminologies in different fields, just as, in botany, tomatoes and cucumbers are berries, and strawberries aren’t.

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