#gothformoths

im gna ramble a bit here, i’ll tl;dr the short answer tho. i just really like etymology & linguistics too & haven’t had much of a chance to ramble about word-stuff here, & this answer is a Little complicated.

so these are called "collective nouns", and while I don't Like the word swarm for it much either, it's important to keep in mind that there are Multiple collective nouns for a lot of things, and that Especially for bugs, swarm is Usually one of them.

alternate collective nouns ive found for wasps are Mostly interchangable with their Home names, which is frustrating, but: a bike/byke of wasps, colony, hive, nest, willow, pail, pladge, and a vespiary, though in varying degrees of verifiability. i’ll go through each of these real quick.

hive / nest / colony: i personally don't like it when the collective noun is literally just a thing that Also exists with the animal, like a "hive" of wasps, or a "colony" of ants, or so on and so forth, that tell us little-to-nothing more about the actual distinct collective behaviour of the animals, & is, again, just a well-known word for their home. functional, but if you say “a hive of wasps” at a group of wasps AWAY from their hive, folks might not know what you’re talking about.

bike/byke literally is just another word for hive. the only upside to this is that it isn’t a well-known word, so you might be able to get away with it, until someone asks what it means.

pail is at least somewhat interesting because it can also be used as a measurement, AKA loosely the amount of something that would fill a bucket. a little bit silly, especially thinking “a liter of wasps” for instance, but it works, and doesn’t have the same issues as the home-word or the same issues as “swarm”.

pladge literally no idea where this one comes from, go stupid go crazy i guess. no ones going to know what you’re talking about, & considering i literally could Not trace the Source of this for the life of me, though it does seem to be in use albeit rarely so you could easily just reinvigorate it as the collective noun for wasps.

vespiary is also just another word for hive.

willow is like, a tree type yeah, but ive got No idea where this comes in for referring to a Group of Wasps. benefits of Pail and Pladge, at least, in that it doesn’t refer to the home, but it also doesn’t really tell us anything in terms of Amount or Organization.

& so i personally prefer pladge over the others, but unfortunately if i were to say "a pladge of wasps" no one would know what the fuck im talking about, so i probably Recommend using just colony / hive / nest. 

okay i was looking up pictures to compare them so i could make a “brian david gilbert? j jonah jameson? or jrian donah jamesbert? it’s up to you to decide!” joke, but instead i found

this?

[IDd: a photograph of Brian David Gilbert, in front of several multicolored balloons. He is looking to the left, grinning, and winking to someone out of frame. A beard has been added to his face in the FaceApp program. End ID.]

[ID: the manlet meme, showing a short man with a buzz cut standing stiffly with his fists clenched, while staring up at a much taller woman holding a microphone. The woman is labeled “barclay, in bigfoot form.” the man is labeled “jake, wearing barclay’s bracelet for some reason.” end ID.]

context:

a) you can pry short jake from my cold dead hands, i’m 5′6″ (5′7″ if i make an effort, 5′9″ if i make an effort and wear boots), if I want to be able to rest my elbow on jake’s head without leaning over then so be it