I’m fiddling with a card game concept, and a very important part of it is creatures interacting with other specific kinds of creatures. This necessarily means I need to come up with lots of type names that are descriptive but vague enough to shove literally anything in them. Here’s some good examples: “bug” containing ants, shrimps, pillbugs, bees, and literally anything that could be called a creepy crawly; “fish” containing everything from salmon to sharks to eels to octopi; “trees” containing all the stuff you are thinking of as well as those precambrian 6-foot fungi pillars; and “cats” including housecats, big cats, cheetah, and carcals.
And that’s everything I can think of that would be useful. You see my problem? I know there are other casual-usage words for big categories of critters, but my grasp of the Enlgish language is fickle and leaves me whenever it is most inconvenient. If there is a list I could work from, that would be very helpful. Otherwise, volunteer as many words as you think would be useful.
Fish: anything that swims
Bird: anything that flies
Floof: anything small and furry
Behemoth: anything large and stompy
Leviathan: anything large and swimmy
Beast: anything big and bitey or not otherwise categorized
In a similar vein, you have these categories:
Bats – the quintessential floof bird.
Beaver – halfway between beast and floof
Floofbird, floofbeast! Love it. I think we’re done here.
That’s not too far off from how Germans name animals.
Bat: flutter mouse Skunk: stink beast Tortoise: shield toad Raccoon: wash bear Porcupine: spike pig Turkey: threatening chicken
There’s so many more! Go look some up for a laugh.
The most interesting part is their base set of animals
Toads, bears, pigs and fish. What else do you need? 😂
In Germany? Nothing, they’re all the same in the wurst anyway