We were out gallivanting around town with the young nephews and nieces.
“Crows scare me! The way they come and all squawk together.”, said one.
“What? Why? “ said the other. “I love crows – ravens specifically. They are so cool, and in almost all the books, they spy and report back to their evil warlords!”
“Butterflies and moths on the other hand!” , said another with a shudder, and I chuckled to myself. I loved butterflies – no use upsetting them by letting them in on the secret.
I left them to it and admired the bottle shaped tree in the park and wondered how it had acquired that particular shape.
After a while, my attention was diverted back to the conversation.
The niece was affronted. I tried ignoring her, and walked on at a brisk pace. We were out a-walking and I refused to be side-tracked by such ‘trivial upsets’ as I told her. She gasped and pressed on.
“But there should be a word for it. I mean you can club sons and daughters and call them children, so why not have one word for nieces and nephews in the plural?”
How she finds something to be affronted about is a blog piece unto itself. For it usually is not the meaty stuff one gets one’s back up about. It is usually something like this.
This time it was because there was no collective nouns for nieces and nephews together. I tried nodding and waiting for the moment to pass. But she harped on, “Don’t you agree? I mean if not a word, at least a collective noun!”
“Who said there isn’t? It is a Problem of nieces and nephews! “ I said my face deadpan.
“Really?”, she asked momentarily disconcerted.
“Yeah! Just like it is a murder of crows. It is a problem of nieces and nephews.” I said and she nodded seriously, before catching her uncle chuckle at her. I threw my head back and laughed loudly at her affronted face, and she was forced to join in and concede that it was a good one.
Luckily, the internet can be relied upon to come up with words for just these sort of things. They are niblings. Derived from siblings, niblings refer to a collection of nieces and nephews.
Nourish-n-Cherish 
Probably makes sense given how much they nibble at food too
Ha! Nibling Nibblers! That should be one post altogether 🙂
Hi, as the affronted niece, I am affronted at being described as finding something to be affronted about 😡 oooh maybe that’s my new thing to be affronted about 🤔🥰
Ha! Relax Shama!