The 'proper term' for a group of ferrets is given in a number of
fifteenth-century manuscripts, with various spellings, in true
medieval style:
  a Besynys of fferettys
  a Besynes of ferettis
  a Besynesse of ferettes
  a besynes of ferettes
  a Besenes of Ferret
  a Besenes of Firets
  The editor Hodgkin remarks:  'The characteristic attribute of a
ferret.  Those who have been out ferreting with grasp this
reference to the animal's businesslike and methodical manner of
attending to its work'.
  The form 'fesnyng' etc. is based on a misreading by a 19th-century
scholar, who read one of these manuscripts as 'a fesynes of ferrets'
(although I rather like the idea it suggests of 'a fuzziness of
ferrets').
  In Middle English, the word means literally 'busy-ness'.
  On the general subject of medieval lore, the thirteenth-century
encyclopedia *De proprietatibus rerum* offers the following useful
advice for ferret owners (here in a modernised version of a 14th-
century English translation):
  'Wormwood...helpeth against bytynge of weseles and of dragouns'.
  Bear it in mind the next time your carpet shark comes in for
the kill...
  Jeffrey L. Singman
  Middle English Dictionary (University of Michigan)
 
[Posted in FML issue 0841]