Talk:pail
Paws pail of swaps edit
I encountered the term "a pail of wasps" in Wikipedia, and on checking on the usage, both present and past found it only in what seemed like mischievous coinages and without support or citation. At [1] I found, together with "nest" and "colony", "a bike of wasps", "a pail of wasps" and "a pladge of wasps". They seem to be without any merit whatever. As I have said elsewhere, collective nouns have degenerated from arguably useful technical terms that once served mainly as means of exhibition of erudition, to an arbitrary class of playfully coined words (which is all right) but that are nonfunctional and ephemeral (which is not all right, certainly not in an authoritative dictionary, where to mention every self-indulgent coinage simply fossilises the feeble wit of nonentities, thereby gratifying their egos at the cost of cluttering reference works). The language can do better without our encouraging such useless impedimenta. JonRichfield (talk) 07:36, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, sadly Wikipedia has a whole list of these collective nouns, including plenty that simply aren't used. Equinox ◑ 08:12, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for this example, but it comes in a book written years after I wrote the foregoing criticism. I reckon that the author simply encountered the term in one of the frivolous sources and accepted it uncritically. Until we have some substantial confirmation for this example, I recommend no further action. JonRichfield (talk) 17:32, 9 June 2020 (UTC)