Today we share the rules of a word game introduced hundreds of years ago: the game of bestowing names upon collections of things. James Lipton, author of An Exaltation of Larks and acknowledged master of the form, calls the business of naming nouns of multitudes as "creating terms of venery." Why venery? Because the very earliest such terms were created for beasts of the hunt (as in "a herd of harts"), and the term venery refers to both animals that are hunted and to the hunt itself.

The way Lipton sees it, inspirations for names seem to fall into one of six categories. Onomatopoeia is the basis for such terms as "a murmuration of starlings" and "a gaggle of geese." According to Lipton, characteristic names based on a salient characteristic comprise the most common terms of venery: consider "a leap of leopards" and "a skulk of foxes."

Other terms of venery reflect appearance, as in "a parliament of owls," while other orders are named for their habitats: "a nest of rabbits." Lipton traces the final two orders to error (he says "a school of fish" was originally called "a shoal of fish") and to comments that reflect the observer's point of view: "a cowardice of curs," for instance, and "an unkindness of ravens."