SunWinks! Sunday Gather Writing Essential February 3, 2013 Terms of Venery (SunWE)

Dear Fellow Gather Racketeers:

 

It’s Poetics Week! Every other week, SunWinks! alternates between a discussion of prose style and a tutorial on poetic technique.

If you love words,
if you love knowing where words come from,
if you love playing with words,
if you love poetry,
if you love a good pun,
then before you die you simply must own James Lipton’s* An Exaltation of Larks, or The Venereal Game.

*(If you’re a fan of Inside The Actors Studio—yes, it’s the same James Lipton.)

The Venereal Game has nothing to do with syphilis.  Venereal comes from the Latin root ven meaning “love” (hence, “venerate”) through the derivative word venari “to hunt game”.  The root ven in venari carries the connotation of desire (and therefore) pursuit. So a term of venery is related to the ancient tradition of The Hunt—hunting wild game.

A handful of venereal terms are still alive in the language, but in the 1400s, every form of prey had its own collective term, as strictly assigned and zealously taught as the names of elements or species.  You would be branded an ignorant bum if you referred to a flock of geese instead of a gaggle, or a herd of lions instead of a pride.

Here are some examples which are common members of our lexicon yet today:

a school of fish

pride of lions

brood of hens

covey of partridges

herd of elephants

litter of pups

flock of sheep

slate of candidates

swarm of bees

host of angels

band of men

colony of ants

string of ponies

plague of locusts…

A second category consists of venereal terms not so common, rarer in ordinary speech, but nevertheless just as old, just as venerable, if you will, and just as valid today.  They’re fun, and they can be very descriptive, even poetic:

a murder of crows

leap of leopards

kindle of kittens

pod of seals

sloth of bears

rafter of turkeys

gam of whales

nest of rabbits

gang of elk

skulk of foxes

wedge of swans

pitying of turtledoves

business of ferrets

crash of rhinoceroses

labor of moles

bouquet of pheasants

troop of kangaroos

knot of toads

clutch of eggs

army of caterpillars

ostentation of peacocks

parliament of owls

exaltation of larks

murmuration of starlings…

At this point, let’s talk about the kind of poetry or wordplay employed by these terms of venery.  Lipton identifies six families:

ONOMATOPOEIA  gaggle of geese

CHARACTERISTIC  skulk of foxes

APPEARANCE  bouquet of pheasants

HABITAT  nest of rabbits

EDITORIAL  ostentation of peacocks

ERROR  school of fish (corruption of an Old English word meaning “shoal”)

Now we come to a third category, which also goes all the way back to the 1400s:  terms of venery applied to people. Schoolbooks of the time give equal weight to these social terms as to the hunting terms, and the social terms display an astonishing degree of wit and irony:

a congregation of people

bevy of ladies

school of clerks

riffraff of knaves

herd of harlots

superfluity of nuns

sentence of judges

diligence of messengers

state of princes

draught of bottlers

impertinence of peddlers

drift of fishermen

melody of harpists

poverty of pipers

neverthriving of jugglers

rage of maidens

skulk of thieves

pontificality of prelates

observance of hermits

safeguard of porters

stalk of foresters

impatience of wives

The Venereal Game has been a favorite pastime of a small but persistent waggle of wits and wordsmiths from that century to this.  Here are just a few of the tongue-in-cheek more contemporary examples from Lipton:

an erudition of editors

unemployment of graduates

rash of dermatologists

cord of woodwinds

slouch of models

lurch of busses

sneer of butlers

shower of meteorologists

indifference of waiters

dash of commuters

mass of priests

fumble of checkgrabbers

prance of equestrians

nucleus of physicists

galaxy of astronomers

bellyful of bores

flourish of strumpets

haggle of vendors

sprinkling of gardeners

Last, and certainly least, my modest scabbard of sallies into this endlessly esoteric entertainment:

an aggregate of rockhounds

organization of librarians

scruple of ethicists

calumny of tabloid journalists

peerage of voyeurs

scrutiny of auditors

chaos of crickets

riot of comedians

clutch of pursers

wobble of unicyclists

scrabble of wordsmiths

wealth of millionaires

collection of scavengers

embarrassment of witches

The Prompt:

Write a sketch or a poem which employs at least one term of venery of your own creation.

Alternate:

Just shoot me your best original or overheard terms of venery as a comment (if you heard it somewhere, do own up).

• Put SunWE in the title and tags.
• Share your post with Gather Writing Essential group.
• Indicate in some way which devices or techniques I should be paying attention to.  (If responding to today’s, put Venery in the title field.)
• This prompt does not turn into a pumpkin a week (or even two) from today.  If your piece isn’t done in the next week or two, get it in when you can.  This is supposed to be fun.
• I will comment on every submission and include a link to it in the next column.
• If you would like a little more academic critique—but still very friendly and positive—include the word "rigorous" in your post (e.g. "rigorous critique wanted").

Responses to previous prompts below. Let me know if I missed yours.

As ever,

Doug

Concrete Poem

A Dirty Poem in a Clay Pot

by Granny Janny

 

The Lead

Scratchers

by sarah leanne

Language Abuse

Quiet Little Lever

Inner monologue

by Angela A.

Can I Get You Some Coffee?

by Sensational Sadie

English?

by JOHN BECK

comment

by Sonia M.

on George Orwell

by Sarah Leanne

 

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© 2013 Douglas J. Westberg. All Rights Reserved.  Please share this on Gather.com, and elsewhere on the web by means of a link back to this page, but please do not copy.   Doug's latest book is The Depressed Guy's Book of Wisdom from Chipmunka Publishing.

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