About the only one of those I use (besides the regular ones like ‘a flock of birds’) is ‘a murder of crows’. Usually in a statement like “We just witnessed a murder.”
I think I generally operate on “it flies = flock”, “it swims = shoal”, and “it walks on land = herd”. There are exceptions, but that’s the broad approach
I would definitely recognise it and would not consider it weird if I heard someone say it, but I probably wouldn’t instinctively reach for it myself. That’s obviously just me though, not necessarily English speakers in general
I love you, English as my second language, but you cray cray and I ain’t doing all of that.
Yeah all of these can be replaced with “group” with no loss in specificity.
Don’t worry, virtually no first-language English speakers do either
About the only one of those I use (besides the regular ones like ‘a flock of birds’) is ‘a murder of crows’. Usually in a statement like “We just witnessed a murder.”
I think I generally operate on “it flies = flock”, “it swims = shoal”, and “it walks on land = herd”. There are exceptions, but that’s the broad approach
Agreed, although I think a school of fish is also pretty broadly used, no?
I would definitely recognise it and would not consider it weird if I heard someone say it, but I probably wouldn’t instinctively reach for it myself. That’s obviously just me though, not necessarily English speakers in general