What is a group of crows called?

We often use the word group to mean a collection of similar things, animals or people: a group of cows or a group of people, for example. However, English has a number of words to denote specifically the group of certain nouns. Although it is not wrong to use the word group, as an English speaker, using appropriate group word for nouns will make your English elegant and stylish.

Let us start with the examples mentioned afore. ‘A herd of cows’ sounds better than ‘a group of cows’. Herd is used for a group of any cattle. For people, we may use crowd or congregation. Therefore, we may say, ‘a large congregation of people had assembled in the church at 7 pm’, or ‘there was a huge crowd of people at the beverage outlet’.

We may say ‘a colony/a swarm/an army of ants’. Swarm is used for bees or mosquitos as well. The collective noun for birds is flock or flight, depending on whether the birds are stationary or in flight. There are many others too: such as a pride of lions, a horde of mice, a tribe of monkeys, a parliament of owls/fowls, a pad of papers, a school of fish/sharks, a cluster of spiders, a constellation of stars, a grove of trees etc.

There are some unusual and fancy collective nouns too: such as a thunder of hippopotamuses, a quiver of cobras, a mischief of mice etc. Do you know what a group of crows is called? A murder of crows!