Sue says many traditional collective nouns incorporate a characteristic of the animal’s behaviour, such as a pride of lions or a cloud of gnats.
“But the way mob is used by indigenous groups for themselves is peculiar to Australia.” “A mob is an untidy collection, whereas a pack is much more orderly,” Sue says. Dingoes became a pack of wild dogs, and one term that we like to think is Australian, a mob of kangaroos (also applied to sheep and cattle), is used elsewhere in the world for other groups of animals. Rather than Australians developing their own collective nouns, they just applied conventional terms to the new area and new groups of animals, says Sue Butler, editor of the Macquarie Dictionary. “By and large they’re falling out of use.” Best collective nouns “Young squires and knights wanting to learn hunting had to learn a whole range of terms, such as a brace of deer or grouse,” he says.
Roly Sussex, Emeritus Professor of Applied Language studies at the University of Queensland, says they were used by those wishing to boost their social status. Many of these were for groups of animals, and some are still in use today, such as a gaggle of geese. The book about ‘gentlemen’s interests’ became popular, and the terms widely accepted as correct English.
