15th-century lists of ‘Proper Terms’, notably that in the Book of St Albans attributed to Dame Juliana Barnes (1486). Many of these are fanciful or humorous terms which probably never had any real currency. (Taken from the Concise Oxford Dictionary)

• a shrewdness of apes
• a pace of asses
• a cete of badgers
• a sloth of bears
• a fleet of birds,
• a dissimulation of (small) birds
• a blush of boys
• a clowder or glaring of cats;
• a dowt or destruction of wild cats
• a peep of chickens
• a chattering or clattering of choughs
• a drunkship of cobblers
• a rag or rake of colts
• a hastiness of cooks
• a covert of coots
• a cowardice of curs
• a dole, or piteousness of doves
• a paddling of ducks on water
• a business of ferrets
• a chirm of finches
• a stalk of foresters
• a skulk of foxes
• a husk or down of hares
• an observance of hermits
• a siege of herons
• a mute of hounds
• a desert of lapwing
• an exaltation of larks
• a leap of leopards
• a pride of lions
• a tiding of magpies
• a sord or sute (=suit) of mallard
• a richesse of martens
• a faith of merchants
• a labour of moles
• a barren of mules
• a watch of nightingales
• a superfluity of nuns
• a muster of peacocks
• a malapertness (=impertinence) of pedlars
• a congregation of plovers
• a pity of prisoners
• an unkindness of ravens
• a parliament or building of rooks
• a dopping of sheldrake
• a walk of snipe
• a host of sparrows
• a murmuration of starlings
• a sounder of tame swine
• a drift of wild swine
• a glozing (=fawning) of taverners
• a spring of teal
• a rout of wolves
• a fall of woodcock

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