Uploaded December 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Let's explore English's many weird collective nouns! And remember to head to squarespace.com/robwords to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code "robwords".
🥚 A gaggle of geese
📊 A business of ferrets
🎓 A school of fish
🔪 A murder of crows
🦊 A skulk of foxes
⏱ An impatience of wives (seriously)
Where on earth did we get all of these strange words for groups of things? Find out in this latest RobWords, where we do some of our own linguistic archaeology.
Check me out on Twitter & TikTok:
twitter.com/robwordsYT
tiktok.com/@robwords
Let's explore English's many weird collective nouns! And remember to head to squarespace.com/robwords to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code "robwords".
🥚 A gaggle of geese
📊 A business of ferrets
🎓 A school of fish
🔪 A murder of crows
🦊 A skulk of foxes
⏱ An impatience of wives (seriously)
Where on earth did we get all of these strange words for groups of things? Find out in this latest RobWords, where we do some of our own linguistic archaeology.
Check me out on Twitter & TikTok:
twitter.com/robwordsYT
tiktok.com/@robwords
![NUMPIRE, NAPRON, [N]EWT and other words were getting wrong](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XBVu4CjYZmo/mqdefault.jpg "NUMPIRE, NAPRON, [N]EWT and other words were getting wrong
Did you know an umpire should actually be a numpire?
Whats more... an apron should be a napron, an adder a nadder, a newt an ewt, and a nickname an ickname. This video explains why on earth that is.
For centuries, English scholars have been accidentally rebracketing words (its also known as metanalysis). Many of their mistakes have stuck in the language, meaning we continue to get these words wrong.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Numpire, napron & nadder
0:27 Explanation of rebracketing
1:20 Newt & nickname
1:44 Evidence in other languages
2:06 Errors that didnt catch on
2:24 Bye bye")
