Here at ScienceBlogs, we have a back-channel where the bloggers can get together and chat. In one of our threads, I was telling a story about work, and an interesting question came up. What's the collective noun for a bunch of geeks?
Collective nouns are cool and funny. Some of them are straightforward: a herd of cows, a pack of wolves. Some are goofy: a wake of vultures, a destruction of cats (that's north american wildcats), an ostentation of peacocks. And there are some fascinating ones: a parliament of ravens, an exaltation of larks.
I don't know of any good collective noun for a bunch of geeks. But I think we need one! So what should it be? Fire away in the comments.
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Comments
A computation of geeks.
A convention of geeks.
An awkwardness of geeks.
Posted by: Jason Adams | December 18, 2007 8:40 AM
In school, my group of friends was called the "nerd herd." I like the idea of a herd - because it implies that you have to do some work to get us to go to the same place, which though possibly not true in a physical sense, usually is in an intellectual sense.
Posted by: Eric | December 18, 2007 8:41 AM
A stench of geeks
Posted by: Anonymous | December 18, 2007 8:42 AM
Here's a couple:
A lambda of programmers
A sum of mathematicians
A parallel of geeks
Posted by: Brian | December 18, 2007 8:48 AM
several grades of possible grouping:
a chaos of geeks
a whole chaos of geeks
an infinite chaos of geeks
Posted by: Anonymous | December 18, 2007 8:51 AM
'Group,' presumably.
Posted by: MartinM | December 18, 2007 9:01 AM
In homage to the last few: a net of geeks.
Posted by: NE1 | December 18, 2007 9:15 AM
GEEK geek[MAX_GEEK];
Posted by: christian udec | December 18, 2007 9:17 AM
Sounds like it just needs a little D&D rubbed on it. Clearly a collection of geeks is a "Party of geeks".
Now hand me a d20 so I can show everybody what a vorporal blade can do *rolls a 1* oh damn...cleric!
Posted by: Boosterz | December 18, 2007 9:18 AM
I've always referred to 3 or more geeks as a gaggle.
Posted by: Jake Voytko | December 18, 2007 9:25 AM
No question, a collection of geeks must be an array.
Posted by: Sandra Porter | December 18, 2007 9:28 AM
A Set of Geeks.
Posted by: Andrew Henninger | December 18, 2007 9:34 AM
Even geeks like being referred to by name, not number, so surely it's a hash of geeks ?
Posted by: Martin | December 18, 2007 9:39 AM
There is a book of a collection of collective nouns written by James Lipton. Yes, that James Lipton.
Posted by: Stephen | December 18, 2007 9:48 AM
Actually, its a "conspiracy of ravens" and a "parliament of owls".
Posted by: Robert McNees | December 18, 2007 10:01 AM
And I don't know about geeks, but if we're talking about nerds then clearly they must be referred to as a "revenge".
Posted by: Robert McNees | December 18, 2007 10:03 AM
I like a computation of geeks just for the random factor, but going for pure compsci geekery probably isn't that great.
I vote for party, personally. (Oh, and it's vorpal.)
Posted by: Xanthir, FCD | December 18, 2007 10:05 AM
A pedantry of geeks
Posted by: Mickey Power | December 18, 2007 10:08 AM
I think it depends on the reason for which the geeks are meeting, or the type of geeks that they are. Computer geeks could form arrays, while DnD nerds form parties. Physics geeks might be galaxies, and Chemists condensates, and biologists populations. A sentence of Linguists.
What can be geekier than a specific qualifying collective noun?
Posted by: Bobryuu | December 18, 2007 10:29 AM
I always liked a "murder of crows".
I do vote for "computation" or "convention" of geeks.
Posted by: Janicot | December 18, 2007 10:29 AM
You should get a great many hits on a google of geeks.
Posted by: chezjake | December 18, 2007 10:31 AM
A "cluster" of geeks sounds obvious.
A "net" of geek is fine, maybe "network" would also fit.
And a third one, though I like it a bit less: a "package" of geeks.
Posted by: Jérôme | December 18, 2007 10:37 AM
A compilation of geeks.
Posted by: Jim Menard | December 18, 2007 10:44 AM
If we're going for something universal, we need a common factor between all the sub-clades.
An argument of geeks.
An encounter of geeks?
Posted by: Morgan | December 18, 2007 10:52 AM
It seems to me that a collection of geeks all applying themselves to the same effort could be called an orchestra of geeks.
Posted by: txjak | December 18, 2007 10:59 AM
Mickey wins.
Posted by: John Armstrong | December 18, 2007 11:12 AM
A Convention of Geeks.
Posted by: Armchair Dissident | December 18, 2007 11:31 AM
A sample of statistics geeks
Posted by: Doug | December 18, 2007 11:38 AM
A clique of geeks (giques?)
A melee of geeks?
A tarball of geeks?
I like party as well. Nice D&D reference, plus an alternate and possibly ironic meaning to people not familiar with D&D.
Posted by: Marty | December 18, 2007 11:42 AM
An n-category of John Baez fans.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | December 18, 2007 11:47 AM
Oh, and I thought parliament was the collective noun for rooks (unless Sandman lied to me).
Posted by: Blake Stacey | December 18, 2007 11:50 AM
Geek[] geeks;
geeks.size();
Posted by: Andrew Henninger | December 18, 2007 12:23 PM
The ones commonly used down heah in Nawth Alibam are: a correlation of geeks, and an accumulation of nerds.
Posted by: Simple Country Physicist | December 18, 2007 12:42 PM
Judging from experience:
A flamewar of geeks.
Posted by: cschorn | December 18, 2007 1:00 PM
I rather like, a heteroclitus of geeks. Not only is it descriptive, but like geeks themselves, the common people would have no idea what it means.
Posted by: Abby Normal | December 18, 2007 1:01 PM
The question is definitely too narrow. Geek is a term that stretches across too many fields to make a single clever name (although you can say "a flock of birds" without naming what type of bird...). So you'll have to define the type of geek group you're naming.
For example, computer science geeks can be lumped as "a flop of geeks" whereas math geeks can be lumped as "a set of geeks" (previously suggested but appropriate, I think). This way you gain some information with the particular term used.
Posted by: Nick | December 18, 2007 1:16 PM
The people at Oxford have a nice list of collective nouns for animals: AskOxford
According to this, both rooks and owls can have parliaments, ravens have aeries, and crows have murders. :)
Posted by: Porges | December 18, 2007 1:35 PM
I also like "party" for the "in"-reference and irony factor.
Posted by: L6 | December 18, 2007 1:56 PM
Oh, c'mon! I can't believe no one came up with:
A googleplex of geeks!
Posted by: Simon | December 18, 2007 1:56 PM
Wow, a lot of good ones. The exact term probably depends on the type of 'geek', generally I break it up as nerd (academic), dork (scifi/fantasy), and geek (computers, a/v, music, etc.) So I'm going with:
a set (or group) of nerds
a convention (or party) of dorks
an array (or band) of geeks
Posted by: Jon L | December 18, 2007 2:32 PM
I have to say I'm impressed with the entire contention of blog comments this post has generated.
Posted by: Canuckistani | December 18, 2007 2:45 PM
I suppose "party" is acceptable... I could back that. I actually preferred the first, a "computation", but that's admittedly a little awkward.
Bonus points to "pedantry", though ;)
Posted by: Michael | December 18, 2007 2:55 PM
Canuckistani, not bad... a "contention" of geeks?
Posted by: Michael | December 18, 2007 2:56 PM
A clan of geeks.
Posted by: Ryan D. | December 18, 2007 2:58 PM
A pocketprotector-full of geeks?
Posted by: WuffenCuckoo | December 18, 2007 3:18 PM
A squabble of geeks.
Posted by: JimDesu | December 18, 2007 3:22 PM
a school of geeks?
like a school of fish, a school of geeks swim in their metaphorical water of knowledge.
however, since most geeks are both polymath, and individualistic, a more proper usage probably would be
"many schools of geek".
Posted by: howard | December 18, 2007 3:23 PM
A conglomeration of geeks.
(This is my second posting here folkds, please do be nice to the newcomer.)
Peace, love and understanding.
~ RubyShooZ ~
Posted by: RubyShooZ | December 18, 2007 3:25 PM
I think right now we're convening as "a thread of geeks"
this can help us distinguish from the classical definition:
"a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken."(from dictionary.com)
which would be accurately called "a sideshow of geeks"
Posted by: Xyz | December 18, 2007 3:25 PM
You should get a great many hits on a google of geeks.
Posted by: chezjake | December 18, 2007 10:31 AM
Ya,
I like this one! Google has done so much for the whole world and especially for the furtherance of geekdom! The least they should get is the honor of being the collective name of us! LOL!
Dave Briggs :~)
Posted by: Dave Briggs | December 18, 2007 3:36 PM
I'm not completely certain what to call the collection of geeks, but I vote for 'accumulation point of geeks' for the place that they congregate...
Posted by: gg | December 18, 2007 4:11 PM
A Newton of geeks.
An Einstein of geeks.
A Mendeleev of geeks.
A Darwin of geeks.
A gravity of geeks.
A molecule of geeks.
An evolution of geeks. Of course this implies
A design of IDiots.
Posted by: Doug Spoonwood | December 18, 2007 4:21 PM
A forum of geeks
A Flark of geeks (it's not a crowd, its Flark.com)
I must say of the above I like Google the most.
Posted by: Jolly Bloger | December 18, 2007 4:35 PM
if ostentation can be used for peacocks, I'd say:
an enumeration of geeks
alternately:
geeksen
Posted by: rpsms | December 18, 2007 5:04 PM
a Tetris of geeks
Posted by: daniel sheehan | December 18, 2007 5:23 PM
An array of geeks.
A n of geeks.
A phreak of geeks.
Posted by: pough | December 18, 2007 5:34 PM
Love "an awkwardness of geeks" from #1-it's akin to a shrewdness of apes, or an obstinacy of buffalo.
A sweat of geeks.
A rationale of geeks.
A slouch of geeks.
A byte of geeks.
A swot of geeks.
Posted by: Barn Owl | December 18, 2007 5:51 PM
A hurd of geeks
Posted by: Hank | December 18, 2007 5:58 PM
A disagreement of geeks.
Posted by: Mark | December 18, 2007 7:39 PM
The very fact that we're doing classification is itself geeky. Therefore, to avoid Russell's paradox, I propose "A class of geeks."
Posted by: Pseudonym | December 18, 2007 9:01 PM
Keep it simple, straightforward and true:
a number of geeks.
Posted by: Janne | December 18, 2007 9:50 PM
a google of geeks.
Posted by: Don | December 18, 2007 10:08 PM
If i worked for Microsoft...
A gravitation of giddy gayglers.
Posted by: uq | December 18, 2007 10:41 PM
one mole of geeks
Posted by: Nick | December 18, 2007 10:43 PM
A Greece of Greeks.
Sorry, I think I misread.
Posted by: Barry | December 18, 2007 10:48 PM
Mark,
In a previous comment you said "If you want to see proofs about the soundness, completeness, and consistency of set theory+FOPL as an axiomatic reasoning system, I'd suggest the Quine textbook.". I recently borrowed Quine's, 1967 preface, edition of _Set Theory and Its Logic_. I see NOTHING about soundness in the index, nor anything around the entries marked 'validity' about soundness. The index for his _Mathematical Logic_, 1981 preface, also mentions NOTHING about soundness. In light of any better evidence, I *maintain* that crisp set theory simply does NOT give us a *sound* logical framework in which we can build theorems and proofs which tell us about numbers, just as informed mathematicians have rejected material axiomatics as all that plausible since the dissemination of non-Euclidean geometry.
Posted by: Doug Spoonwood | December 18, 2007 11:31 PM
A stampede of geeks.
Posted by: sciencegirl | December 19, 2007 1:04 AM
An argument of geeks (argument having more than one meaning. heh.)
An involution of geeks (not sure why I thought of that. Maybe introversion + complexity? Plus it's a cool word.)
A skeegfo of geeks (for palindromicity's sake. OK, that one's kinda lame.)
A drift of geeks (thinking of how conversations change focus...)
Posted by: Owlmirror | December 19, 2007 1:17 AM
Did anyone suggest a Study of geeks?
Posted by: Barry | December 19, 2007 1:20 AM
An ensemble of geeks.
Posted by: Mark Dow | December 19, 2007 4:08 AM
A stack of geeks.
An aggregation of geeks.
A deposit of geeks.
Posted by: Edmund | December 19, 2007 4:22 AM
A confluence of (linguistics/hydrology) geeks
A conclave of (cryptography) geeks
A convection of (meteorology/oceanography) geeks
A convocation of (singing/acoustics) geeks
A concretion of (geology) geeks
A contiguity of (networked) geeks
A confocus of (optics) geeks (confocality?)
A contretemps of (clumsy) geeks
A concupiscence of (sexology/horny) geeks
I could continue, but I think I have committed enough conspicuous construction.
Posted by: Owlmirror | December 19, 2007 4:48 AM
As mentioned before, there are far too many varieties of geek to touch on. "Convention" is a nice generic one, though.
Posted by: Andrew | December 19, 2007 7:35 AM
netful?
Posted by: Jonathan | December 19, 2007 7:45 AM
So I attended the "Trends in Functional Programming" this last year when it was here in New York City (this is on-topic, trust me). One of the "social events" they had was a bus tour of the city, and one of the stops was the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (IIRC). After wandering around the cathedral for a bit, a group of us gathered back outside by the buses and where chatting. I, humorously, asked what a group of functional programmers should be called- were we a closure of functional programmers, etc.
"No," replied one of the other participants, waving towards the cathedral behind us, "it's a Church encoding of functional programmers."
Well, it was funny to us at the time.
Posted by: Brian Hurt | December 19, 2007 8:48 AM
I propose:
A dword of geeks
A roaming geekosphere
My vote is really for a hash of geeks though!
Posted by: skitch | December 19, 2007 12:50 PM
A cache of geeks!
A node of nerds?
Posted by: lala | December 19, 2007 1:10 PM
Speaking of continuation and construction...
A construction of architecture/art geeks.
A constriction of high-pressure geeks.
A congruence of math geeks.
A congregation of atheist geeks.
A consilience of science philosophers.
A concatenation of string theory/comp. sci. geeks.
A cons of Lisp programmers.
A conniption of angry geeks.
Stopping now.
Posted by: Owlmirror | December 19, 2007 4:00 PM
I vote for whoever suggested an "Array of Geeks."
Posted by: David | December 19, 2007 4:39 PM
An embarrassment of geeks
Posted by: Dave | December 19, 2007 4:44 PM
An aversion of geeks
A wedgie of geeks
(My favourite off-topic collective noun: a pester of mormons).
Posted by: Dave | December 19, 2007 4:51 PM
A recursion of geeks
Posted by: bob | December 19, 2007 6:35 PM
A study of geeks. I see that someone said it already, which makes it all the better.
(An array of geeks is a nice touch, too.)
Posted by: Max | December 19, 2007 7:59 PM
Slightly different topic here, but if at a later date someone decides to define a word for a group of perverts, I want to go ahead and toss "giggidy" out there.
Random Quagmire quote-
Quagmire: Hey there sweetie, how old are you?
Connie: 16.
Quagmire: 18? You're first.
Connie: Mom!
Quagmire: I like where this is goin'! Giggidy, giggidy, gig-gi-dy!
Posted by: Boosterz | December 19, 2007 10:16 PM
A groupoid of geeks
Posted by: Contumely | December 19, 2007 10:18 PM
A google?
Posted by: Ron | December 20, 2007 2:50 PM
"Hurd" is too awesome
Posted by: quantumberry | December 20, 2007 8:58 PM
A cacophony of geeks.
Posted by: pillz | December 20, 2007 11:23 PM
a lanparty
a sig
a cog (recurring acronym of a cog of geeks)
Posted by: Victor | December 21, 2007 3:20 AM
a lanparty
a sig
a cog (recurring acronym of a cog of geeks)
Posted by: Victor | December 21, 2007 3:21 AM
a lanparty
a sig
a cog (recurring acronym of a cog of geeks)
Posted by: Victor | December 21, 2007 3:22 AM
a lanparty
a sig
a cog (recurring acronym of a cog of geeks)
Posted by: Victor | December 21, 2007 3:23 AM
A Packet of Geeks
A Frame of Geeks
A Summation of Geeks
though I liked an array of geeks the best!
Posted by: xero | December 21, 2007 8:30 AM
An Assembly of Geeks.
(W/regards to http://www.assembly.org/ )
Posted by: jab | December 21, 2007 9:25 AM
my vote is somewhere in: packet,frame,array,cache,computation
Some of these in the list are retarded... think they were huffing glue before they posted?
Posted by: trigger | December 21, 2007 3:14 PM
A library of geeks
Posted by: David Ratnasabapathy | December 21, 2007 4:17 PM
I like "array" of geeks, but the "party" is very good and D&D-y too!
Posted by: Chris | December 21, 2007 5:39 PM
A 1337 of geeks.
Posted by: Reinhardt K. | December 21, 2007 8:17 PM
LooooooooooooL
what about :
a distribution of geeks...
or a Gaussian of geeks...
Posted by: MIZO | December 22, 2007 4:53 AM
Hmmm...
A blog?
Posted by: Neutral Observer | December 22, 2007 7:02 AM
a cons of geeks
duh
Posted by: grahamsw | December 22, 2007 10:08 PM
on the bird thing:
It is a Parliment of owls;
but I think you'll find its an 'unkindness' of ravens (one of the coolest collective nouns).
and seeing Geeks don't seek physical proximity for socialising, aggregates are usualy a byproduct of physical resource sharing for better information networking. So I propose:
A node of geeks
Posted by: Chris Glen | December 23, 2007 3:15 AM
How about "a Boss of Geeks" because eventually the geeks we so fondly ridicule will eventually be the very people for whom we end up working.
Posted by: Dave | December 24, 2007 4:53 PM
A gospel of geeks.
A keyboard of geeks.
A pizza of geeks.
A potato of geeks.
There is a book of group nouns: "An Exaltation of Larks" by James Lipton.
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|
December 25, 2007 5:05 AM
An argument of geeks, of course.
I find the ability of any group of geeks to find some common topic and then argue about some detail in it endearing, and pretty universal whether the geeks are talking game systems, computers, book vs movie version of anything, comic book heroes, or what energy source will light our tomorrows.
Posted by: Samantha Vimes | December 26, 2007 5:53 AM
I vote for an array of geeks and a google of nerds.
Posted by: Italo M. R. Guedes | December 26, 2007 5:33 PM
Is there a formal definition for geeks and nerds already?
I think geek is associated with "computer geeks", the sort of guys that build their own computers and upgrade them all the time to play the latest games. They can setup a lan-party with their eyes closed, and play some competitions for 72 hours with lots of caffeine. They love the most low-level stuff about computers and their favorite language is assembly.
Nerd is more like the "science" guy, as in "computer science". They love mathematics and other sciences. They like abstract reasoning (rather than low-level aspects) and their favorite language is haskell.
So my definitions would be:
- An Array of geeks
- A Set of nerds
I believe all readers of GM/BM are elements of a Set of Nerds ;)
Posted by: Daniel | January 1, 2008 7:58 AM
"I don't know of any good collective noun for a bunch of geeks."
Well, how about a bunch of geeks? Why make life complicated?
Posted by: ta | January 4, 2008 12:34 PM
A locus of geeks (presumably geometry geeks).
Posted by: Betz | January 4, 2008 10:50 PM
An integration of geeks.
Posted by: Zenber | January 5, 2008 1:07 AM
how about a "!! of geeks" read a bang bang of geeks?
Posted by: mac | January 8, 2008 1:44 PM
I submit: A mash of beer geeks
Posted by: msr | January 10, 2008 11:28 AM
Given the flow of conversation in my geek group, I suggest "A Tangent of Geeks"
Posted by: Kiloburn | March 11, 2008 3:16 AM