After watching more word history videos and reading more articles, I have had this phrase stuck in my head all week long: "How do you get a clowder of cats from a chaos of kittens?"
There are a lot of bizarre names for groups of animals (and people) in English. Most of us have heard of a FLOCK of sheep or birds, a SWARM of bees, or a SCHOOL of fish. Maybe you've heard of a MURDER of crows. But believe me, this list goes on and on (and on), with weird and wild phrases that come as go as language evolves. Here's a good overview video from Rob Words.
One of the earliest big lists of these can be found in "The Book of Saint Albans" from 1486. It was one of those gentleman's guidebooks that have been with us for centuries. Here is an edition from the Gutenberg Project - you can get to the list by doing a text search for "Swannys", just after the halfway point in the document. This list has extremely antiquated spellings, but some of the colorful groups on the list are: a Charm of goldfinches, a Muster of peacocks, a Pride of lions, a Brace of greyhounds, a Litter of whelps (puppies), a Kyndyll (Kindle) of young Cats, a Gagle (Gaggle) of Geese, a "Scoll" of fish (either School or Shoal), and so on.
There are some strange entries for groups of people as well: a Prudence of vicars, an Eloquens of lawyers, a Discretion of priests, an Execution of officers, a Faith of merchants, a Rage of maidens ... this is so strange. But I want to focus of animals here. You can see that FLOCK and PRIDE do go this far back.
There is an excellent article that goes into depth on this book, with the clearest images of the original pages from 1486, here at The Marginalian.
Let's get the cats out of the way: Daily Paws has a good summary of how the CLOWDER of cats came to be, where CLOWDER is a old word related to clutter and clotting, an unformed pile of things. They also list these alternatives: Cluster of cats, Clutter of cats, Destruction of cats, Dout of cats, Nuisance of cats,Pounce of cats, Kindle of kittens. Clearly there must have been other lists over the years, or just regular folks making up phrases that stick around for a few years.
The Google Ngram viewer shows that "clowder of cats" was popular before 1800, but drops way down to near zero in the 1920s, had some minor hits through 2000, after which is makes a big resurgence back to those original levels (about 0.0000003%). Kindle of kittens and clutter of cats make a small mark after 1920, never above 0.00000003%.
Let's try tracing some of these across the centuries.
"Strutt's Sports and Pastimes" (1845) can be found at Project Gutenberg; you can find the list of animal group phrases in Book I, Chapter I, Chapter XVIII. Just search for "clowder" to find it. I was able to find earlier editions going back to 1802, and excerpts in Monthly Review which kept the words alive.
The Sporting review - Volumes 57-58 (1867) - Page 375: Here's the list again, in one huge blocky paragraph, with this fine introduction: "The sportsmen of the middle-ages invented a peculiar kind of language, when speaking of things belonging to the chase, many of which are in use at the present day. To have made a wrong use of any of these particular epithets would have subjected him who made it to ridicule; indeed such is still the case, and to speak of the hound as a do, or to talk of the tail of the fox instead of the brush, would be an offence which the ears of a modern Nimrod would not tolerate." The article goes on to refer to Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes", then hits us with the chunk of a list. Clowder of cats and kindle of kittens both occur here again. The author's conclusion is also spot on: "There can be no doubt that when they were first employed, the phraseology was descriptive and natural, so we must take them as we find them."
Word-lore - Volume 3 (1928) Page 60 "Nouns of Multitude" has another of these always-evolving lists. It's a shorter list than usual, but it has Clowder of cats and kindle of kittens. Also: gaggle of geese (or devils, or women), pack of hounds, cowardice of curs, shoal of whales (or porpoises) but it's a shoal of fish (not a school).
The World Almanac and Book of Facts of 1970 had another big list of animal group names, and most families had one or more of these almanacs around the house when we were growing up in the 1970s. We can see how these almanacs have played a big part in keeping these lists in circulation.
Rover.com has a fun article on names for cat groups.
Now, I knew that nobody was using "chaos of kittens." That was just my poetry brain showing how arbitrary these phrases are, by contrasting a "real" one (clowder of cats) with a made-up one (chaos of kittens).
I would like to find "Dictionary of collective nouns and group terms" By Ivan George Sparkes (1985) since a whole book on the topic caught my attention. I could find no digital edition, but I ordered a hardcover for about $20.
Further reading:
What Is a Glaring of Cats?
The article has a bit of info for each of the major cat group names, including glaring, nuisance, clutter and cluster. It mentions that the "destruction of cats" is meant for big/wild cats.
Refers to this article on cats.com
Quote: "Kindle comes from the Middle English word 'kindelen,' which means 'to give birth to young.' It can also be used to describe the act of a mother cat giving birth, in other words, a female cat 'kindles' and produces a kindle of kittens."
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