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I read the term but am failing at the spelling. Just like you have a gaggle of geese or other words. The word I'm looking for is to describe a crowd of various nationalities, skin colour etc who are constantly talking, just like penguins do. The opposite of homogeneous is heterogeneous, but is known/used in the animal kingdom more. Does anybody know the word I'm looking for. I'm sorry I can't be more clear than that atm.

Update - It rhymes with concupy - concopious , it is something similar, it is also used to describe in many small children fantasy books when birds and other animals make noise in celebration, all in different voices.

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  • How did you try to spell the word? That will help us pin it down. You don't mean throng, by chance? – Dan Bron Dec 4 '16 at 18:04
  • @DanBron have updated my query. – shirish Dec 4 '16 at 18:09
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    Oh, you mean cacophony. But please note that it doesn't have a connotation or denotation of a heterogeneous crowd of people or animals, but rather a heterogeneous "crowd" of sounds. – Dan Bron Dec 4 '16 at 18:09
  • correct, could you put it as answer please. – shirish Dec 4 '16 at 18:11
  • @DanBron's answer is definitely correct, but note that cacophony is a noun, not an adjective; the adjectival form would be cacophonous. So "there was a cacophony coming from the crowd" or "there was a cacophonous crowd in the street" but not "there was a cacophony crowd". – 1006a Dec 4 '16 at 21:20
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Based on your edit where you say the word rhymes with concupy/concopious, the word you are looking for is:

cacophony

Which Collins defines as:

  1. harsh discordant sound; dissonance
  2. the use of unharmonious or dissonant speech sounds in language

However, please note that cacophony doesn't have a connotation or denotation of a heterogeneous crowd of people or animals, but rather a heterogeneous "crowd" of sounds.

Etymologically, it comes to us from the Greek for "evil/bad sounding", but the connotation above that strict meaning is "sounds terrible because of a mixture of a bunch of disparate sounds that don't go well together".

Of course, a crowd of many different people jabbering at one another, shouting over each other, and generally being noisy is pretty well captured by cacophony, so the word has become attached to that image and is often used in that context.

Having said that, the word is by no means restricted to crowds (human or otherwise) babbling: it's still used as an epithet for music one doesn't like, the kids making a ruckus in the nursery, and so on.

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Animated.

Cacophony isn't an adjective.

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