Collective Nouns Questions with Solutions

English has a specific, fixed noun for a group of almost any animal or thing — a pride of lions, not a "group" of lions — and these are simply learned, not derived from logic. Here’s the approach, four fully worked examples, and a few to try yourself.

The approach, quickly

• Each collective noun is fixed to its specific group, usually by long-standing convention — there’s no pattern to derive it from, so these are learned one at a time, like vocabulary.
• Many collective nouns for animals are historically tied to the animal’s behaviour or hunting style (a "murder" of crows, a "pride" of lions) — a short story or association can help the word stick.
• Some words serve as the collective noun for several different groups (a "school" works for fish, and separately for whales) — don’t assume each word maps to only one group.
• When in doubt between two options, eliminate any word you recognise as the correct collective noun for a DIFFERENT group first — that process of elimination narrows it down fast.

Worked examples

Try these yourself

Recall the fixed term for each group, then check against the answer.

Where this comes up

Collective Nouns is tested directly in the English Language section of every exam Pariksha Saathi covers — SSC CGL, SSC MTS, SSC CHSL, IBPS PO, IBPS Clerk, SBI PO and SBI Clerk.

Practice more Collective Nouns questions

This page covers the approach and a handful of worked examples. Pariksha Saathi has full topic-wise practice sets for Collective Nouns (and every other English/Reasoning/Quant topic) with instant scoring and explanations — free, no account required.