Words / M / General

murmuration

noun/məːmjʊˈreɪʃən/

C2CEFR level
80/100Rarity: very rare
LiteraryRegister

A large, wheeling flock of starlings moving as one shifting mass.

At dusk a murmuration of thousands poured across the sky like drifting smoke.

Similar: flock, swarm

Origin: from Latin murmur 'a murmur', a term of venery

Topic: collective nouns in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More general words: collective nouns