There are lots of colorful names for groups of birds – murder of crows, etc. – most of them unofficial and most of them with obscure etymologies.
How about “asylum of loons”, one of the terms for a grouping of this usually solitary water bird? Where did that come from?
Maybe it came from a 2010 article in the Monitor – as I report in a bit of reportorial frothiness which I hope will slightly counteract the endless barrage of bad news that infests our heads these days.
Return to the Concord Monitor
My first thought was: “Blame Canada”. Because of their coinage.
I thought I found an earlier reference in Audubon’s “Ornithological Biography” (1830s) where he quotes his friend Thomas Nuttall’s loon experiences, apparently attempting to domesticate a young one: “Though at length inclining to become docile, and shewing no alarm when visited, it constantly betrayed its wandering habits, and every night was found to have waddled to some hiding place, where it seemed to prefer hunger to the loss of liberty, and never could be restrained from exercising its instinct to move onwards to some secure or more suitable asylum.”
Aha! But no, this is pretty much using “asylum” in its “safe space” sense, not the “funny farm” sense.
Which, come to think of it, was the original rationale behind naming those mental facilities “asylums”.
Which, come to think even further about it, is a good example of the “euphemism treadmill” where a term originally adapted to avoid offense eventually becomes deemed offensive itself, and goes out of polite usage. (It appears most dictionaries label the “mental institution” definition of asylum to be dated.)