43 Collective Nouns for Animals flashcards, ready to print. $2.99, once.
One payment buys the deck twice over: the printable PDF and every card unlocked to play online. Eight to a sheet, cut guides on every card, and the answer sheet already mirrored so a long-edge duplex print puts every answer on the back of its own question. 17 pages, US Letter, black and white. Grades 4–12.
Both halves, one price. A single deck printable is $1.29 on the store shelf and unlocking a deck to play is $2.99 — $4.28 for the two. Here they are the same $2.99 purchase, so you save $1.29 — and there is one receipt to keep instead of two.
Includes every card unlocked to play online — $4.28 bought separately. One payment, no account, no renewal.
Same price, opens in the editor. Reword any card, add your own, print it your way.
Not sure yet? The first 30 cards of this deck are free to play and free to print, right now, with no email. Play the free 30 · Print the free 30
17 pages, and the backs are already right
Every front sheet is followed by its own back sheet with the rows reversed. Print double-sided, flip on the long edge, and answer number 7 is behind question number 7. Print a deck you built yourself, flip on the short edge, and every answer lands on the wrong card — which nobody finds out until sixty cards have been cut apart.
- 43 cards — counted out of the file, not rounded up
- Eight cards a sheet, with cut guides
- US Letter PDF, black and white, photocopier-friendly
- Print a set per student, every class, every year
43 cards. There is no canonical list of collective nouns, so instead of padding this deck with the hundreds of names that circulate online, it is limited to terms that at least two independent dictionaries of record actually enter for that animal. Anything that could not be found in a dictionary was left out — see the notes.
Every card here is cited to two independent sources
Two different organisations — not a standards body and a website reprinting it — and a script refuses the card if the two disagree, so the check runs on every card rather than on the ones somebody remembered to look at. A second specialist then re-verified this deck from sources of their own, without reading our citations first. A further 5,420 cards across 30 other decks were read end to end by a subject specialist instead, and we say which is which on every deck rather than averaging the two into one flattering word.
What 43 printed cards do that a screen does not
A phone deck is one card at a time. A printed deck is a pile you can split: the ones you know, the ones you nearly know, and the ones you keep missing. That third pile is the entire study session, and it is the thing a scrolling app hides from you.
- Print once, use all year. The licence covers a set per student, every class, every year.
- No device, no login, no data. Works in a cover lesson, on a bus, or at a kitchen table. Grades 4–12, filed under english & reading.
- Change what you disagree with. Every card loads into the free maker on this site. Reword it, drop it, add your own, reprint.
Here are the first 30 cards, written out
Check them against your own textbook before you spend anything. If you do not like how they are worded, do not buy the deck — that is what this list is for.
- Geese on the ground
- A gaggle — geese not in flight.
- Geese or ducks in flight
- A skein — wildfowl on the wing.
- Lions
- A pride — related females, their young and a few adult males.
- Whales, dolphins or porpoises
- A pod — marine mammals travelling together.
- Fish swimming in unison
- A school — fish of one kind moving together.
- Fish keeping together socially
- A shoal — biology's general term; a school is a shoal that is polarised and swimming in unison.
- Wolves
- A pack — predators of one kind that hunt or run together.
- Cattle, deer or elephants
- A herd — large animals of one kind kept or grazing together.
- Sheep, goats or birds of one type
- A flock.
- Honeybees leaving a hive with a queen
- A swarm.
- Ants or termites
- A colony — a localised population of one species.
- Quail or partridge
- A covey — or a bevy; dictionaries enter both.
- Cats
- A clowder — an arcane word, not what English speakers actually say; 'a group of cats' is ordinary usage.
- Puppies born at one birth
- A litter — the offspring of a single birth.
- Chicks hatched at one time
- A brood — the young hatched or reared together.
- Eggs laid in one nest
- A clutch — the eggs; once hatched they are a brood.
- Cattle or sheep being driven along a road
- A drove.
- Starlings wheeling together in flight
- A murmuration.
- Locusts
- A plague — a destructive influx of a noxious animal.
- Camels travelling together across a desert
- A caravan.
- Oxen joined at the neck as a pair
- A yoke.
- Draught animals harnessed to one vehicle
- A team.
- Racehorses kept by one owner or stable
- A string.
- Female animals gathered round one breeding male
- A harem — used of polygamous animals such as seals and elk.
- Seals or penguins at their breeding ground
- A rookery — strictly the breeding place, not just the animals.
- Hounds kept and hunted together
- A kennel — the pack, as well as the building.
- Horses or mules driven as a matched pair
- A span.
- Game birds counted in twos by shooters
- A brace — two brace of partridge is four birds.
- Crows
- A murder — recorded from about 1475, in the Porkington manuscript; now a dictionary sense.
- Larks
- An exaltation — a flight of larks; chiefly British.
Download all 43 cards — $2.99
The printable and every card unlocked to play — $4.28 bought separately, $2.99 together. One payment, no renewal, no account. Or take every deck: Study Pack, $11.99 a month — all 78 decks, all 7,178 cards, every printable, no ads. 5 single decks costs more than one month.
Includes every card unlocked to play online — $4.28 bought separately. One payment, no account, no renewal.
Same price, opens in the editor. Reword any card, add your own, print it your way.
Questions
- How do I print them double-sided?
- Double-sided, flip on the long edge. Every front sheet is followed by its own already-mirrored back sheet, so print them in the order they come and every answer lands on its own card.
- Can I edit the cards?
- Yes, and that is half the point. Once you own the deck, the "Buy & edit" button here opens all 43 cards in the free flash card maker on this site — reword a definition, delete the ones you do not teach, add your own, and print at anything from two to nine cards a page, rather than the fixed eight of the PDF.
- Can I print a set for every student?
- Yes. Personal and classroom licence: unlimited printing, every class you teach, every year you teach it. It does not cover reselling the file or passing it on to a colleague.
- What if I find a card that is wrong?
- Tell us and we fix it, and we publish what changed. We have withdrawn a whole deck from sale for being out of date rather than quietly patch it.
- Do I need an account?
- No. $2.99 at Stripe, the file downloads on the way back, and the deck stays unlocked in this browser.