An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition

A delightfully unexpected, lovingly curated ode to the unique collective nouns that adorn our language, from €œa leap of leopards€ to €œa murder of crows€ and beyond, from the inimitable voice behind Inside the Actors Studio

€œI am madly in love with collective nouns! They make language so colorful and ticklish. . . . [An Exaltation of Larks] possess[es] an embarrassment of riches (wink wink!).€ €"Lupita Nyong€o, The New York Times

For those who have wondered if the familiar €œpride of lions€ and €œgaggle of geese€ were merely the tip of a linguistic iceberg, James Lipton has provided a definitive answer: here are hundreds of equally pithy, often poetic terms he has unearthed and collected into one exhaustive volume. Over years of painstaking research, he embarked on an odyssey that has given us a €œslouch of models,€ a €œshrivel of critics,€ an €œunction of undertakers,€ a €œblur of Impressionists,€ a €œscore of bachelors,€ a €œpocket of quarterbacks,€ and many more.

Witty, beautiful, and remarkably apt, An Exaltation of Larks is a brilliant compendium of more than 1,100 resurrected or newly minted contributions to that ever-evolving all species, the English language.