Education: The Group Noun

Perhaps the story was old, but it was sweeping through academic circles:

Four dons were walking down an Oxford street one evening. All were philologists and members of the English department. They were discussing group nouns: a covey of quail, a pride of lions, an exaltation of larks.

As they talked, they passed four ladies of the evening. The dons did not exactly ignore the hussies—in a literary way, that is. One of them asked: "How would you describe a group like that?"

Suggested the first: "A jam of tarts?" The second: "A flourish of strumpets?" The third: "An essay of Trollope's?" Then the dean of the dons, the eldest and most scholarly of them all, closed the discussion: "I wish that you gentlemen would consider 'An anthology of pros.' "

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TOMMY WARD, whose family has been harvesting oysters from the Gulf of Mexico since the 1920s, on the FDA's plan to ban the sale of raw oysters that are harvested in warm months; about 15 people die each year due to raw-oyster contamination
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Quotes of the Day »

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TOMMY WARD, whose family has been harvesting oysters from the Gulf of Mexico since the 1920s, on the FDA's plan to ban the sale of raw oysters that are harvested in warm months; about 15 people die each year due to raw-oyster contamination

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