lready mentioned in the post called "A gulp of swallows”, the earliest presentation of collective nouns appears in the Book of St. Albans, dating back to the fifteenth century. It was a trilogy of gentlemanly activity on hunting, hawking, and heraldry. Heraldry, the science and art of designing and displaying family crests and coats of arms, originated out of the necessity to distinguish the identity of jousting participants, when their helmets were closed. Heralds or Coats of Arms were the means to identify members of particular families. The photo to the right below, an example of a coat of arms, is that of my family. Hawking, later termed falconry, was a popular sport of the landed gentry ~ gentlemen, since the pursuit was a costly one to procure and raise the raptors to hunt game. To intensify the indulgent nature this sport of chase and capture personified, prey were given poetic names, called terms of venery.
ven·er·y (n) pl. ven·er·ies Archaic
1. The act or sport of hunting; the chase
2. Indulgence in or pursuit of sexual activity.
3. The act of sexual intercourse.
[Middle English veneriefrom Medieval Latin veneria, from Latin venus, vener-, desire, love.]
A collective noun represents two or more individuals of the same species. There’s often confusion about whether a collective noun calls for the verb to be used in the plural or singular. The simple rule of thumb when using collective nouns is that if the two individuals or group is acting individually the plural form is used, if acting together, as in a unit, the singular verb is appropriate.
Take for example a descent of woodpeckers. If all woodpeckers are acting in concert, like “a descent of woodpeckers drums the bark of a welcoming conifer tree, in search of prey”, they are all doing the same thing then the verb to use would be singular.
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