It doesn't have to be scientific though, to be on BAM.MarleysGh0st wrote:Very likely, TPTB would agree with your reasoning, Jeemie.Jeemie wrote:Except we've gone far beyond the original Turkey Vulture Society site, and found other sites that state the same thing- some of them independently.
I think the work sunflower has done shows sufficient evidence exists that vultures are called a "venue" on the ground and a "kettle" while circling in the air.
It doesn't matter whether it is a "popular" usage...unless you can prove that any of the other birds are called by those two names, I don't see that you have a case.
At worst, you can say the question was unfairly valued- but we've seen that before.
Personally, I think there's a difference between saying a group of vultures are called a "venue" in a list of what groups of animals are called, and actually calling them a venue of vultures in practice. The former may simply have been coined by unemployed English majors with too much time on their hands. The latter would be evidenced by books and journal articles by ornithologists using the term in the context of a more detailed study of their behavior. You know, something like "Social Interaction in a Venue of Vultures: A Study by John James Audubon and Alfred Hitchcock."
Has anyone found such a usage, as opposed to those "fun fact" references?
They could ask what LOL or any random internet lingo means...and there will be a right answer for it, even if it was never in a novel or the Oxford English Dictionary.
I think we should stop debating it among ourselves, while everyone has that one piece of evidence they think is credible (one wants the OED, one wants it in a novel, etc.)
Zoos, scientists and journals used it and I provided those sources. They weren't enough because they were purported to be based on the TVS info, which is not necessarily true in all cases. And even if they got it there, if they all use it, it is obviously accepted!!!