Go to a party and gather round some of the party-goers. Announce that you are all going to play a Word Game. Most likely your audience will fade like the "snows of yesteryear." Mutterings of dire warnings will emmenate from small groups hiding in dark corners. Well this is a marvelous game of long standing.

The venery game is all about the hunt and words attached there-to. "From Venus we have the Latin root ven which appears in the word venari, meaning to hunt game." So writes a master-player. Venery deals with a form of collective terms usually applied to fish, fowl, creepy-crawly things and all beasts in general. Writings on venery go back at least to Le Art de Venery, a Norman French book of the 1320's by Edward II's master of the hunt, William Twici.

All the material for this article is drawn from James Lipton's extraordinary book An Exaltation of Larks (1991, to be had from Penguin Books or your local book vendor). He gives over a thousand amazing terms of venery.

Our everyday speech is still graced with venery terms. Think of: a pride of lions; a gaggle of geese; a covey of quail; a school (shoal) of fish; a sea of troubles.

Venery is something that could stand earnest revival.

Printing had just started in England in 1476 when The Horse, the Sheep, and the Goose, containing the first extended list of terms of venery, was to be found at the booksellers. Since then authors as disparate as Conan Doyle, Cotton Mather, James Joyce, Winston Churchill, and James Lipton have made forays into venery. Lipton presents a lively section on music. Consider:

A Backseat of Accompanists; A Schrei of Heldentenoren; A Flatulence of Bassonists; A Carousel of Rondo; A Jumpcut of Music Videos; An Embouchure of Brass Players; A Spite of Prima Donnas; A Hum of Hymns; A Parenthesis of Cellists;	A Spasm of Hard Rockers; A Tangle of Spotlights; An Oscillation of Break Dancers; A Shriek of Claques; A Second Fiddle of Violists; A Rhapsody of Blues; An Attitude of Rappers; A Decibel of DJ's.

Opinions differ as to the rules of the game. Some hold that the clever joke is to good to ignore. Lipton might cite as examples, "A Flow of Californians," "A Yech! of Cockroaches," and "A Troop of Horses" as good examples of that school. On the other hand there are those who assert that something essential should be told about the term's object. A revelation is necessary. "Something we failed to notice or took for granted until that moment." It is a "spotlight that illuminates something for us, letting us see it with a fresh insight, or as if for the first time." So there you are: "A Brio of Conductors," "A Pound of Pianists."

I wonder if any one can come up with a neat term for MIDI files. Until then invent and enjoy.