Nye (09-28-09)

Nye. I first heard that word a couple of weeks ago at a junior high football game. “And the tackle is made by a nye of Ringnecks!”

When I first heard it, I didn’t know what I was hearing. I thought, perhaps, the announcer was trying to be cute, saying an eye of Ringnecks, like an eye of a hurricane. But then I heard it again, and again, and then at the high school homecoming football game.

The other day, I received an email from my good friend Chris Gansel, asking if the term indeed meant “flock.”

So I looked up nye and found all sorts of collective nouns. Under “pheasants” I found nye, head, bouquet and warren.

Chris dared me (actually he double-dog-dared me!) to say over the PA when I announced the Junior-Ringneck game, “the tackle was made by a bouquet of Ringnecks!” I told him no, not even if he triple-dog-dared me.

But all this talk about collective nouns got me interested. So I spent some time on the net, looking at more grammar websites than I care to mention. The number of websites devoted to collective nouns is staggering. Good to see the English language is so well represented on the net!

This is what I found. My further research turned up even more collective terms for pheasants, including covey, nest, and nide, although the terms nide and nye apparently are only used to describe pheasants “on the ground” with nide signifying a brood, and nye being the general term for grounded Ringnecks. Bouquet, I came to learn, is used to describe pheasants when flushed, leading me to think that maybe bouquet would be the best word to use when comparing football players to flying birds.

Looking up the other bird mascots in our league, I found aerie and convocation for the Trego Eagles, band, party, and scold for the Norton Blue Jays, and college, concave, deck, radiance, and Vatican (yes, with a capital “V” no less!) for the Plainville Cardinals.

Finding collective terms for our non-bird league mascots was more of a challenge. For the Stockton Tigers, I found streak and ambush. I can just hear an announcer calling out, “and the streak of Tigers are steaking across the field!” Certainly creates an image!

I had to get creative to find the collective terms for the Phillispburg Panthers, Osborne Bulldogs, and Smith Center Redmen (and I’m not even going to attempt the Ellis Railroaders!) While I could find nothing for panthers specifically, for “cats” I found clowder, clutter, glaring and pounce. The list also contains dout and nuisance as well as kendle and kindle, but those signify house cats and kittens, which might offend the more literate of the Phillipsburg fans.

Osborne has perhaps the most boring collective terms for their mascot, although again I had to switch to “dogs” in place of the specific “bull dogs.” I found only kennel and the familiar pack. However, one website, did list cry and mute to signify hounds, and my favorite, cowardice for “curs.”

(No, Chris Gansel, I don’t care is you quadruple-dog-dare-me, I will NEVER announce an Osborne play as being made by a “cowardice of Bulldogs.” That would be insulting to them, and frankly I suffer from too much cowardice myself to ever go there.)

As for Smith Center, well I couldn’t find any “official” words denoting a collection of Redmen. On www.Answers.com is posted the question, “What is the collective noun for Indians?” Underneath the question is the statement: “This question has not been answered yet” with a place to click to submit your answer. So, anyone’s guess is as good as another. How about powwow, or warriors or ambush or even mob?

My favorite collective noun is not for one of the mascots in our league, or even for any mascot I know, though I suppose somewhere in our wide world of sports, some team calls themselves the “rhinoceroses” (or would that be “rhinoceri”?).

The collective term is crash. Now that is a announcer’s dream word for describing a group of determined young men crashing through the line and crashing into the ball carrier. Go Rhinos!

The best part of all this research was discovering the brilliance of language. Collective terms, while sometimes strange and unusual, can also be incredibly descriptive and evoke powerful images. Collective terms are fun, whether saying a “Vatican of Cardinals” or a “pounce of Panthers” or even a “nye of Ringnecks!”