‘Hallo, my covey’ says Jack Dawkins, the Artful Dodger, when he first meets Oliver in Dickens’s Oliver Twist. ‘Covey’ is a diminutive form of ‘cove’, still used in third person reference of a man, or fellow....

Dr Primrose, in The Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith, addresses his congregation at one point as ‘my dear deluded flock’. See also...

A herd is a large group of animals. The term is usually applied to mammals, particularly ungulates. Other terms are used for similar phenomena in other types of animal. For example, a large group of birds is usually called a flock (this may also refer...