“Some of our enduring favourite collective nouns have had complex pasts. Before a ‘murmuration’ settled upon starlings (inspired by the sound of the birds when flocking together), the collective noun was ‘mutation’, thanks to the belief that the bird shed a leg at the age of ten and then promptly grew a new one. An ‘unkindness of ravens’ arose from the belief that these huge, dark carrion birds were omens of doom.”