destruction

English took this noun from Old French destrucion, itself from Latin dēstructiō, by way of Middle English destruccioun. Its usual partner is of, which names what is destroyed: the destruction of a building, of a weapons stockpile. A possessive does the same work. When F. A. Hayek wrote in 1949 of a free society carrying "the forces of its own destruction," the society is the thing undone, not the doer.

Here the word stops naming an action and names what is left behind: rubble, a scorched coastline, a flattened town. One quick test separates it from the act of destroying: this kind of destruction can be surveyed, photographed or cleared away. Abraham Lincoln, in 1838, stretched it toward ruin as a fate. "If destruction be our lot," he warned, a free nation "must ourselves be its author and finisher."

Collective names for animals form a playful tradition, and this one keeps company with gaggle, confusion and conspiracy. Its natural setting is the naming formula itself: a group of wild cats is called a destruction. In ordinary prose it works best when the reader can tell the wit is intended. Otherwise a destruction of cats risks being read as the plain sense of ruin.