like "a crowd of people"

[Untaught88]

Hi,

Is there a word used before "customer" like "a crowd of people"?

 

[emsr2d2]

Hi.

Is there a word that is commonly used before "customer" like "crowd" in "a crowd of people"?

We can say "a crowd of people" but that doesn't mean that "crowd" is the collective term for "people". There are other words we could use there, such as "throng", "group", "gaggle" and, no doubt, several more.
I can't think of a natural term that would be used with customers, except maybe a "queue" if you're talking about people waiting to be served in a supermarket.

Some nouns have collective terms but they're normally animals:
- a gaggle of geese (when on the ground)
- a skein of geese (when flying)
- a parliament of owls
- a prickle of porcupines
- a flock of sheep
- a herd of cows

There are some amusing fake ones - an indecision of politicians, for example.

 

[GoesStation]

A body of coroners.

 

[Untaught88]

Can we also use "a flock of owls"?

 

[emsr2d2]

No. You can spend a couple of hours with this list!

 

[GoesStation]

I'm not a fan of those lists. The author of A Parliament of Owls claimed all the bizarre collective nouns he had assembled - a real bizarreness of collective nouns - had at some time been in common use. If so, those times were in many cases fleeting, I suspect. I think a flock of owls would be fine if any owls actually flock. (In my experience, they're solitary birds.)

 

[emsr2d2]

Really? A flick of owls?

 

[GoesStation]

Really? A flick of owls?

No, darn it. For some reason lately I've been hitting the O on my phone's keyboard a lot when aiming for the I. This was one of those times, and I didn't catch the error.

I think we can agree that this thread is generating a pot of posts though!

 

[Roman55]

How about, a dissatisfaction of customers?

 

[GoesStation]

I've been deluged by a vermin of telemarketers lately.