I’m fiddling with a card game concept, and a very important part of it is creatures interacting with other specific kinds of creatures. This necessarily means I need to come up with lots of type names that are descriptive but vague enough to shove literally anything in them. Here’s some good examples: “bug” containing ants, shrimps, pillbugs, bees, and literally anything that could be called a creepy crawly; “fish” containing everything from salmon to sharks to eels to octopi; “trees” containing all the stuff you are thinking of as well as those precambrian 6-foot fungi pillars; and “cats” including housecats, big cats, cheetah, and carcals.
And that’s everything I can think of that would be useful. You see my problem? I know there are other casual-usage words for big categories of critters, but my grasp of the Enlgish language is fickle and leaves me whenever it is most inconvenient. If there is a list I could work from, that would be very helpful. Otherwise, volunteer as many words as you think would be useful.
Reading the comments on this makes me realize how often we think about animals, considering we apparently have thousands of different ways to categorize them, even if it’s more by vibe than anything else…
I categorize all things by vibe
Keeps shit mellow
But how do you categorize vibes?
Groovily
Far out, man, far out.
Fish: anything that swims
Bird: anything that flies
Floof: anything small and furry
Behemoth: anything large and stompy
Leviathan: anything large and swimmy
Beast: anything big and bitey or not otherwise categorized
Bats – the quintessential floof bird.
Beaver – halfway between beast and floof
Floofbird, floofbeast! Love it. I think we’re done here.
That’s not too far off from how Germans name animals.
Bat: flutter mouse Skunk: stink beast Tortoise: shield toad Raccoon: wash bear Porcupine: spike pig Turkey: threatening chicken
There’s so many more! Go look some up for a laugh.
The most interesting part is their base set of animals
Toads, bears, pigs and fish. What else do you need? 😂
In Germany? Nothing, they’re all the same in the wurst anyway
In a similar vein, you have these categories:
- fourfooted beasts of the earth
- wild beasts
- creeping things
- fowls of the air
You want broad sweeping categories? Maybe categorize by behaviour?
Crawlers Slitherers Swimmers Flyers Stationary creatures Sunlight eaters Carnivores Plant eaters Omnivores
I think decide what your groups actually are first, then label. So a fish in this list would be swimming carnivore.
The biggest difficulty with answering this question I think is that I don’t know how broad the categories should be. Do you have an estimate of how many categories you’re looking for?
Honestly, my main motivation here is to pick all of your brains to see how many different category-words there are, then change my game plan to react to the natural language words. For example, if we didn’t have words more specific than Animal, Plant, Fungus, and Bacteria, I could slap a four-color mana system on that and call it a day. Obviously that’s not the case, but in the unlikely system that I can describe all of creation using only 20ish names i could imitate Cardfight Vanguard and make them into a sort of clan system and do lots of clan-exclusive comboing off each other. Any more than that, I imitate Magic instead: certain cards care a whole lot about types (e.g.: Kavu you control are red in addition to their other colors, Red creatures you control have haste) while others pay more attention to subtypes (e.g.: Tap 12 Allies you control: draw a card) and other just don’t discriminate, affecting everything or nothing.
Collective noun might be the word you’re looking for. This list is for animals in particular.
And here we thought baraminology would never be useful for anything.
Haven’t seen that term in ages. Thanks for reminding me of terrible YEC arguments. The Flerfs have been stealing all the attention (although there is definitely overlap).
Canid and canine generally mean any of the dog-like animals: domestic dogs, wolves, fox, coyotes, dingoes, jackals, wild dogs
Parrot applies to members of the Psittacine family: parrots, macaws, parakeets, cockatiels, cockatoos, parrotlets, lorikeets
Herps and herpetofauna are used to collectively refer to amphibians and reptiles: frogs, salamanders, newts, lizards, turtles, snakes
Bear means all actual bear species but is also often used in reference to pandas and koalas (just don’t say it in front of my scientifically accurate kid)
Waterfowl is ducks, geese, swans
Depending on why or how you’re using categories, you can also group by characteristics: Do they have fur, feathers, or scales Do they lay eggs or give birth Are they predator or prey Do they eat meat, plants, fruit, pollen, or some combination
So it sounds like you could make categories that are
- location based: sky (flying), jungle
- climate based: ice/cold, desert
- task based: tunneling animals, builder animals, nest making animals
You could also start from a list of animals and then categorize them afterwards based on what you have. As for a list, maybe by biological families or classes?
Or attribute based: furry, can fly, two eyes, scales, etc.
Octopi aren’t fish.
Do you mean collective nouns ?
Or just “generic groups”, as in animal, plant, rock, fungi, lichen ?
Maybe group words that aren’t as specific as collective nouns and not as generic as groups:
- canine
- marsupial
- mammal
- primates
- carnivores
- vertebrates
- reptiles
- birds
Does that help?
My justification for calling octopi fish is that I asked a pre-schooler what kind of animal an octopus was, and he told me it was a fish because it breathes water and swims in the ocean. That said, maybe cephalopods could be their own type because they tend to be solitary, which would be thematically relevant to why they wouldn’t combo off each other.
IDK any list like that. Why not make the list in your own language and see how much can translate to English without distorting the meaning too much?
I know there are other casual-usage words for big categories of critters
And that’s the only word you need, right there.
“Critter” being a variant of “creature”, which OP also uses. They seem to want something coarse-grained but not that coarse.
Well this was a fun game to play with the family. Here’s some words we came up with:
Algae
Amphibians Animals Annual
Aquatic Baby Bacteria
Beasts Bipedal Birds Blossoms Buggers Bugs Bushes Cacti Carnivores Cats Crabs Crawler Creatures Creepy-crawly Critters Critters Dogs Dolphins Domesticated Estuarine Fauna Fern Fish Flora
Flutterer
Flyer
Foliage
Forager
Fowl Fungi Furballs Game
Grasses Herbivores Herbs Insects Invertebrates Larvae
Lentic Lichens Lizards Lotic Mammals Marine Microbes Mini-beasts Molds
Moss Moths Nestling
Old Omnivores Pelagic Perennial
Pests Plankton Pond dwellers Pray Predators Primates Protozoa
Prowler
Quadrapedal Reptiles Reptiles Riverine Rodents Scavengers Seedlings Serpents Sharks Shelled Shrubs Spores Swimmer
Symbiotes Trees Tropical Varmint
Vertebrates Vines Viri
Weeds Wetland Whales Wild Worms Yeasts Young xerophyticHope that was helpful.
