📚 This is an archive of Aid Thoughts, a development economics blog that was active from 2009 to 2017. Posts and comments are preserved in their original form.

In which we Tackle the Most Important Issue in Development

We don’t have any really good collective nouns, do we? There’s nothing like a “pride” of lions, or an “annoyance” of mimes. I humbly suggest the following:

  • A sympathy of charities
  • A  contradiction of economists
  • A frustration of bureaucrats
  • A complexity of anthropologists
  • A confusion of NGOs
  • A quagmire of donors
  • An infestation of politicians
  • A detail of immigration officials
  • An excellence of bloggers (I suspect others may wish to change this to 'A smugness of bloggers'. I'll let you decide. I vote for excellence, as a totally unbiased observer, of course).
Feel free to add some more or suggest improvements.

Categories: Development
Tags: Language

6 Comments

Kajsa · September 08, 2009 at 03:17 PM

Haha, I loved " A quagmire of donors", why not continue on that path and suggest "A cacophony of bloggers" ? Although excellent too , of course.

Ranil Dissanayake · September 09, 2009 at 09:35 AM

ha! yes, a cacophony! brilliant.

Ben Parker · September 11, 2009 at 09:49 AM

One from the archives...

- A wunch of bankers

Sam Gardner · September 11, 2009 at 11:56 AM

The tendency to follow the same fads: a herd of donors?

Transitionland · September 13, 2009 at 05:56 PM

Over at my blog, I added:

A conviction of international criminal lawyers A compliance of human rights officers A delay of IGOs A creep of IFIs A consternation of think tanks A bluster of pundits A vigilance of monitors

Sheilah · September 14, 2009 at 02:48 AM

An abundance of smart, but poor people