bevy
noun/ˈbɛvi/
Etymology From Middle English bevey, of uncertain origin, possibly Anglo-Norman.
1
Collective A group of animals, especially quail or other birds.
- The pond was another favourite place to visit. Moorhens strutted from the neighbouring bushes, and a bevy of Muscovy ducks, a study in black, white and red, waddled from the farmyard hard by to enjoy a refreshing splash.1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 217:
2
Collective A group, especially a large group, and especially a group of attractive girls or women.
- In the midſt of all this buſtle, I was ſtruck with the appearance of a large bevy of beauties and women of the firſt fashion, who with all the perfect confidence of good breeding, inſhrined themſelves in the ſeveral temples dedicated to the Cyprian Venus[.]1755, Adam Fitz-Adam, The World, number CXXI, London, page 789:
- The same messenger who summoned the whole bevy of renegades, Dover, Peterborough, Murray, Sunderland, and Mulgrave, could just as easily have summoned Clarendon.1849, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James II, volume II, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, page 365:
4 more examples
- One of the lords of Argouges, when out hunting one day, met a bevy of twenty ladies of rare beauty, all mounted on palfreys white as the driven snow.1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 485:
- The two elder of the brothers were plainly not intending to linger more than a moment, but the spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing without male partners seemed to amuse the third, and make him in no hurry to move on.1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume I, London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC, phase the first (The Maiden), pages 22–23:
- [H]e'd always have this drawer full of random crap. Chinese yo-yos, candy, handcuffs—just a bevy of stuff—and I'd usually convince him to give me some of it. I wasn't pushy, but he had TONs of it, so come on, […]2011, Ryan Zimmerman, I was a Bad Kid - The True Tales of a Deceptive Child, →ISBN, page 3:
- For every dedicated scientist patiently recording atmospheric pressure and wind speed while shivering at high altitudes, there is a carnival barker with a bevy of pretty girls willing to dangle from a basket or parachute down to earth.2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36: