Animals sometimes have wild collective nouns.

A few years back, we ran through some of the standouts, which included an armoury of aardvarks, a coalition of cheetahs, and a flamboyance of flamingos.

That’s not forgetting a prickle of porcupines, a venue of vultures, and a cackle of hyenas.

Wonderful stuff – you can read more here.

I’m not sure who gets to have the final say on what is the definitive collective noun to use, but Seth decided he wanted to look into prawns.

Long-time readers may be familiar with Seth’s battles with ‘prawns’ over the years, spanning way back to the early days of 2oceansvibe, so this has been a long time coming.

We Googled around, and Answers.com says it’s a ‘preponderance of prawns’.

Anybody who has ever been stuck behind a massive group of cyclists on one of South Africa’s roads might be in agreement

However, someone else has entered the fray on this thread and said:

There is no standard collective noun for the noun prawns, in which case a noun that suits the situation can be used, for example, a parade of prawns, a pail of prawns, a plate of prawns, etc.

How very disappointing. A plate of prawns isn’t going to cut it, not even close.

Yes, a plate of king prawns with garlic butter drizzled over the top is tasty (and usually pricey), but we need a collective noun that speaks more to the essence of the prawn, to what really makes them tick.

We’ve had a long chat about it amongst the 2OV brains trust – these are the immense tasks we are often saddled with – and settled on a collective noun that I think needs to be universally adopted going forward.

May we present to you, a ‘peloton of prawns’.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a ‘peloton’ is the main field or group of cyclists in a race.

Such as:

I believe our work here is done, but we are open to further user submissions. If you think you can best a ‘peloton of prawns’, you’re welcome to leave a comment below, or you can email editor@2oceansvibe.com.

Seth promises he will read each and every prawn-related mail, which is more than he can say for the press releases that flood his inbox.

Happy Monday.

Thanks, Ant

[source:answers]