Name: Collective Nouns in English: How to talk about groups of people and things
Uploaded: 2017-09-09T01:26:12.000Z
Duration: 10 min 27 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Okay, I was just baking some cookies,
but the strangest thing happened.

A group of rhinos started
chasing me, so now I'm just...

I'm trying to escape, but I want to give you
guys this very, very important English lesson

So I'm going to put these down, and we're
going to try to do this lesson before the

Thanks for clicking, and welcome to
this lesson on "Collective Nouns".

So, collective nouns are nouns we use to talk
about a group of things, animals, or people.

Of course, it's possible just
to say: "A group of", whatever.

For example: "a group of birds" or "a group of
kittens", but there are very specific names

that we can give them and we do give them
to make it a little more specific, I guess.

So, I'm going to give you first some of the
most common ones that we use, and then some

So, to begin: I had "a batch of
cookies" at the start of this lesson.

So, if you are baking and you bake a lot of
cookies like I did, you baked a batch of cookies.

So you can say: "The
first batch is ready."

or "The second batch is in the oven."
or "I made three batches of cookies."

I think many people
probably know this one.

So, you can give a bouquet of flowers to your
mother on Mother's Day, or to your girlfriend,

boyfriend, husband, wife on the
anniversary or Valentine's Day.

Next: If you play poker, you
need "a deck of cards".

It is a group of cards,
but we don't say:

We say: "Do you have a
deck of cards?" Okay?

Next: Birds, if you have many birds, a group
of birds together, they are called: "a flock",

In the 1980s there was a band
called "Flock of Seagulls".

A seagull is that white, annoying bird in
public, and they had a famous song, "I Ran",

went like: "And I ran,
I ran so far away..."

So, "a flock of birds",
"a flock of seagulls."

Next: For cows and buffalo, you can say: "a
herd", "a herd of cattle", "a herd of buffalo".

If you have kittens, baby cats, baby
dogs, you say: "a litter of kittens",

So, for example, in the movie 101 Dalmatians,
a famous Disney movie where there are 101

baby puppies, baby Dalmatians,
that is a litter of 101 puppies.

Next: "a pack of wolves",
or dogs, or hounds.

So, the movie, Frozen, very popular amongst young
people, girls-my daughter loves it-there's

a scene where Anna and Kristoff are escaping
in the forest and behind them there are a

bunch of wolves, a group of wolves, so you
can say: "A pack of wolves is chasing them."

Next: "a panel of judges"
or "a panel of experts".

If you watch TV shows, like The Voice, or
American Idol, and you have one, two, three

Usually you have the nice one, and the annoying
one, and the one who's really hard on people.

"A school of fish", so I'm going
to tie this to movies again.

If you have seen Finding Nemo, any time you see
that big group of fish travelling together,

Yes, just like go to
school, the same thing.

You cannot say: "One information, two
informations, three informations".

You can say: "A lot of information"
or "A wealth of information".

So, caterpillars become butterflies, but if you
have a lot of caterpillars together, that's

I don't recommend you Google search "army
of caterpillars", especially if you don't

like insects because some of the pictures
of the caterpillars all together, and being

It's not very nice if
you don't like insects.

Also, "army" like: "an
army of soldiers".

Or in this case, on my shirt, an army
of stormtroopers from Star Wars.

"A caravan of camels", so you think of a
caravan and you think of camels from...

Being from Egypt, so
a caravan of camels.

So this one is very challenging
because it's "gaggle".

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Collective Nouns in English: How to talk about groups of people and things

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