Quote:
Originally Posted by Graham King
Do the collective nouns have to be actual nouns or can we - should we - make up words de novo? Does 'coin' here mean innovate the usage or create the word itself?
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It would be quite a feat to manufacture eight new words out of thin air, or whole cloth, or whatever. I doubt that's the sort of coinage Lucy is expecting, although she'd most likely welcome creative examples of it.
She's probably looking for us to repurpose existing words, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the winning "collective nouns" aren't nouns in common parlance -- e.g, "a spic-and-span of charwomen."