Oct 07 2008
The Venereal Game
What I seek to introduce you to today is a game, but more than just a game. Once, knowing how its older members had played was necessary to sound wise in the relevant circles. Now, it is a pastime primarily shared by linguists and wordsmiths. In itself, it can serve as an excellent worldbuilding tool, granting color to local language without requiring the full effort of creating a new language.
Yes, as you may have realized, it’s not as dirty as it sounds. According to James Lipton’s An Exaltation of Larks, “venery”, from the Latin root ven, “to desire; to pursue” was a term most closely associated with the hunt. Terms of venery, then, were as important to the hunt as mechanical shorthand to the RPG community, or literary terms to writers; remembering them was a sign of being in-group, in the know, part of the culture.
What these terms are is essentially collective nouns. But unlike the rather generalized collective nouns we often use today, the idea was that each species had its own—you might refer to a murder of crows, but an unkindness of ravens. Due to their hunt roots, many of these terms of venery described game animals—but not all by any degree of the imagination. Lipton describes six ways these terms originate: Some are onomatopoeic, sounding like the sound the described creatures make (a gaggle of geese). Some are characteristic, describing attributes or tendencies of the subjects (a skulk of foxes)—this is most common. Some are based on appearance (a bouquet of pheasants). Some are habitat, one way or another (a nest of rabbits). Others are commentary, based on the observer’s point of view (a richness of martens, a cowardice of curs). And some, like “a school of fish”, are just cases of someone messing up when writing down the original term.
While the largest historical list of these charming phrases was The Book of St Albans, a 164-phrase collection published in 1486 and written by Dame Juliana Barnes, that doesn’t mean the venereal game ended there. It is still alive and flourishing. In fact, in the original edition of An Exaltation of Larks, Lipton asked his readers for further suggestions and received, as he put it, “a tidal wave of terms.” My personal favorite among these is “a helix of geneticists”, though I’m rather partial to “A metamorphosis of ovoids” and “a rhapsody of blues”.
How can we use this? The most logical use is worldbuilding. Venereal nouns lead to a more colorful language, which makes it sound more alive. Even if all we’re doing is using the existing ones, that creates a further element of the good old Middle Ages feel, when the choice was learn every single one of these or be thought a churl.
Another is to bring the poetry back to our language, and show off in the process. Yes, show off. The venereal game is one of wit—how amusing can we make our collective nouns?
Besides, I’m interested in a large-scale game. I’ve never done this with more than one or two other players, and that’s not near enough to get a proper exchange of ideas going. So—without suggesting any new terms yet (you’ll understand why soon, hopefully by the end of the week), who’s interested in playing the venereal game with me?
