subs. (colloquial).—A clergyman’s congregation. Also any body of people with a common haunt or interest: e.g., a family of children, a company of soldiers, a school of girls or boys, ‘a cabful of molls,’ and such like.
TO FIRE INTO THE WRONG FLOCK, verb. phr. (American pioneers’).—To blunder. A variant is TO BARK UP THE WRONG TREE.
1858. New York Herald, 9 Nov. When Mr. Saulsbury rose and called the Speaker’s attention to the alleged blunder in the Secretary’s report, his own friends jumped up in great excitement and pulled him down; he soon found out that he had FIRED INTO THE WRONG FLOCK.
