Sunday, January 2, 2011

Collective blue

What's the collective noun for Blue-bottles? I was thinking that it might be swarm or flotilla.

Various sites list the collective noun for Jellyfish as Smack, smuth or brood and in addition to these wikipedia also lists Bloom and fluther . Bloom is probably the only one I have heard used- and in particular to this bloom of jellyfish in the Sea of Japan (video here at Lateline's small story).

But after reading the wiki entry linked above, I now know that Blue-bottles are not jellyfish and as much of the common language names for the organism and anglicisation of its Latin name (Portuguese Man-o-war) is to do with ships, perhaps flotilla is a good name. But flotilla and even swarm, with it's connotation of out of control bees, does not capture the menace of encountering a stack of the bastards in the water and at the water line on the beach.

After our New Years Eve trip to the deserted and idyllic Era Beach, with a strong North-easterly blowing a massive amount of bluies onto shore, I kind of think that the correct collective noun should be *cluster-fuck*.

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