bevy

plural bevies

1. collectiveA group of animals, especially quail, roe deer or other game.

   A bevy of birds were flushed by horsemen.

   1892, The Fanciers' Journal, volume 8, page 101

   5 more examples

   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

   But a bevy of hinds seem to try to shelter a distressed one, and by running on with her in a bunch to puzzle the hounds

   1906 March 28, “Hind-hunting”, in Baily's Magazine of Sports & Pastimes, volume 85, page 207

   The harts and hinds in their herds, the boars in their singulars, the skulls of foxes, the richesses of martens, the bevies of roes, the cetes of badgers and the routs of wolves - all came to him more or less as something which you either skinned or flayed and then took home to cook.

   1958, T.H. White, The Once and Future King

   It is true that this habit of running affords many shots on the ground, and often places the whole bevy directly under fire; but no true sportsman would thus ingloriously fill his bag by 'potting' a bevy of such noble game birds.

   1877, Elliot Coues, Birds of the North-West

   Among several "Educational Leaflets" received from the American National Association of Audubon Societies, reference may be made to the so-called Virginian quail, or "Bob White" (Colinus virginianus), a bevy of which forms the subject of the illustration here reproduced.

   1911, Sir Norman Lockyer, Nature, volume 87, Macmillan Journals Limited

2. collectiveA group, especially a large group, and especially a group of attractive girls or women.

   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

   5 more examples

   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

   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

plural bevies

1. alternativeLiverpoolAlternative form of bevvy.