Prickle
collective noun /ˈprɪkəl/ — What you call a group of porcupines — simple, perfect, slightly funny.
Definition
The collective noun for a group of porcupines. Porcupines are mostly solitary animals, but when they do gather, the collective noun captures exactly what you'd feel if you got too close.
Beyond the definition
Simple, perfect, and slightly funny. A prickle of porcupines needs no explanation — it tells you everything about what makes them what they are. It's one of those collective nouns that makes you wonder how anyone settled for anything less exact.
Origin & history
From Old English prica — a point, a sharp thing. Porcupine quills are modified hairs stiffened with keratin. A single porcupine has around 30,000 of them — a prickle, by any measure.
Example sentences
Illustrative sentences for learning, not verified community posts or sourced quotations.
A prickle of porcupines had stripped the bark from the young trees overnight.
The dog retreated from the prickle, wiser than it had been five minutes before.
A prickle moved through the underbrush, each animal its own small fortress.
Synonyms
group, cluster, band
Related words
Word in the Wild
See how this word appears in life, language and stories.
Illustrative sentences and imagined stories for learning — not verified sightings, interviews, or sourced quotations.
Word in focus
A prickle of porcupines
Porcupines resting together inside an enclosure.
Here, “prickle” names the whole gathering. Notice the animals together rather than looking for one individual with that name. The photograph illustrates the group; it is not evidence that this particular scene inspired the expression.
Image credit: Paul Christian B. Yang-ed · CC0 (license)
Resized and converted to WebP; displayed with a fitted crop.