An RPG of Nerds

Perhaps you’ve heard of one of the English language’s creative sides. That of calling a group of the same animals by a specific word. Like a pod of whales or a gaggle of geese. Some of these can be quite funny, like a parliament of owls or a murder of crows.

As you can probably guess from the title, I’m proposing we apply these terms to differing groups of humans. For general groups you can have a ‘giggle’ of girls or a ‘prank’ of boys. How about a ‘bust’ of women or a ‘testes’ of men. Look, some of these are off the top of my head, if you have better ones please post them in the comments section.

Then we get to the stereotypes alluded to in the title. Besides that ‘RPG’ of nerds, we could have a ‘beat down’ of street toughs. Or a ‘snob’ of cheerleaders.

We could go by hobbies. A ‘drunkard’ of sports fans, a ‘vinyl’ of record collectors, a ‘metal’ of coin collectors and a ‘lick’ of stamp collectors.

But the one where I see the most opportunity for naming is by job or specialty. A ‘murder’ of serial killers (sorry crows), a ‘shake’ of seismologists, a ‘hoot’ of librarians (how come I always think of owls when I think about reading?), or a ‘study’ of researchers.

We could honour people by giving their name to a group in a specialty. How about a Mendel of geneticists, a ‘Wright’ of architects (that one sounds confusing considering ‘wright’ is a different occupation), or a ‘Davis’ of actresses.

But there is already a name for one group of people that I can think of. A ‘coven’ of witches. Does this mean that witches were just ahead of their time and forecast this article? Or that we viewed them in the past as being very animalistic?

I’ll leave you with the most groaneriffic of the ones that I thought of: a ‘puff’ of smokers.