A pride of lions; a school of fish; a leap of leopards; a parliament of owls; a shrewdness of apes; a clowder of cats; an unkindness of ravens…are “terms of venery, colorful collective nouns that evolved in the Middle Ages of Europe when the sophisticated art of hunting demanded an equally sophisticated vocabulary.”…from one of my all-time favorite books given to me by my mother long ago, James Lipton’s An Exaltation of Larks or the Venereal Game. The venereal game is not directly related to the term “venereal disease,” though both are similarly linked to Venus, goddess and astrological indicator of love and wild animals. Continue reading →