Flock of Birds, School of Fish, ____ of Robots?

Posted 20 Jul 2009 at 17:41 UTC by steve

That's the basic question being asked in a contest being hosted by our friends at BotJunkie.com. One of the curious things about the English language is that is has so many different collective nouns: a host of angels, a herd of antelope, a swarm of locusts, a fling of sandpipers; there are hundreds of these. Some are just strange such as parliament of owls, a knob of pochards, a cohort of zebras. But in all those words there's no collective noun to describe robots. We all know the word robot was coined by Josef Čapek for his brother Karel's play, R.U.R. And we know Isaac Asimov is responsible for the word roboticist. Now it's your turn to take your place in history for coming up with the best word for a group of robots. Fame can be yours. Oh and there might be a prize too. Entries so far include things like the Borg-inspired "collective of robots", a "mechanation of robots", a "matrix of robots" and a "gestalt of robots". Can you think of a better one? (pictured above is an assemblage of astromechs!)

Gaggle of raining down death mechaterminators!, posted 30 Jul 2009 at 10:06 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

I like the word Gaggle. It makes me giggle.