Talk:Collective noun

PLEASE READ: rules for new candidates
In a break from usual tradition of "edit as you see fit" I'm going to ask people to list new candidate nouns here. I am running an Access database which generates the table scripts automatically - it is a lot easier than scrolling through all that wiki-code.

If you modify or correct something, could you also list it here, so I can edit the database. If anyone wants the db, just email me (address is on my personal page). It's currently only 200K in size.

Please list candidates here. If you can find a dictionary reference for it, please say so. Many collective nouns are obscure and archaic - hence a citation from any (respectable) dictionary will be deemed to validate the term.

If you know the term is spurious, then say so. I have no problem listing spurious nouns, so long as they are clearly marked as such. Things like "a clutch of mechanics" have humour value, even if illegitimate. - MMGB

Nice one, Manning, I wish I'd thought of doing this! I'll put some more up for the collection, and many thanks for your help with this. sjc

- shelfful of books - carpet of flowers - drift of snow - stack of papers, cards - arsenal of weapons - hail of bullets - coil of stamps - tissue of lies - circle of friends - trail of tears (somebody please flag this? this is an ugly trivialization of race-based genocide in the USA) - growth of trees - series of games - hand of cards - pack of cards - can of worms - I think this only refers to a problematic situation, and is not a collective term for worms - sleeze of sponges (possible spelling issues) - cord of wood - bushel of wheat/corn/potatoes (also peck = 1/4 bushel) - barrel of oil (42 gallons) - TCF of natural gas (trillion cubic feet) - Quad BTU or just Quad (quadrillion British Thermal Units) - wate of meetings (sounds like wait/weight)

This should live on collective noun, shouldn't it? And, given that we're not going to have subpages, all the subpages could conveniently live on, e.g., collective nouns sorted by subject and collective nouns for birds. --LMS

Oh bugger. - MMGB

Sorry, really I am. :-) --LMS

This is a cool idea. Anthology of prostitutes. Heh, heh. Not brilliant prose, but I just wanted to contratulate you, Manning. I think it's good work! &lt;&gt;&lt; tbc

Actually, I originally started this Talk page to try to get a better definition of the subject at hand. I gave a couple of examples that I thought might be questionable, thinking that they might have been omitted for a definite reason. They weren't really intended as suggested additions, but rather to try to identify the scope of the subject. Partly this was because lots of obvious ones were missing. For example, deck of cards is included, but not stack of cards, or pile of cards, or hand of cards. Am I to understand that all these should be included, but the list just isn't yet complete? -HWR

Always assume the list isn't complete. - MMGB

- drift of snow - isn't this singular?

Wouldn't that exclusion also apply to:

- anthology of prose - heap of trash - slew of homework - wad of money

hmmm... fair comment. - MMGB

Prose, money and those

I've got a list I've had lying around on my hard drive for quite a while, which was based off of information in Paul Hellweg's "Insomniac's Dictionary." Rather than check the existing lists and cull out duplicates, though, I figured I'd let you do all the hard work for me with your fancy-dancy database. :)

Paul has a whole whack of references at the back of his book, but doesn't specify which ones these came out of. Still, the book seems well-researched, so perhaps it counts as a suitable reference on its own.

(long list deleted, one by one...) Every single item you listed was already included, except for the one listed below. I'm waiting for opinions as to what to do with this one.

Wolves	Route - ''currently listed as "rout". couldn't find a citation for "route"''


 * Looks like a typo or an American unfamiliar with the English word "rout" to me... I always thought it was a rout of wolves, myself. sjcTW:

a quarrel of crossbow bolts sjc

Also, Manning, I notice that goldfinches are no longer referenced as a charm. I have always referred to them as a charm (we get about twenty or so of them at a time in our garden in summer sometimes), and so does everyone else I know who knows what they're on about! They are perfectly delightful. I am reinstating the most prevalent usage of charm as a collective noun (in my neck of the woods at any case). sjc


 * After 50 or so of them flew up in my face out of some high grass, I coined the phrase "rush of goldfinches". Gold rush, get it.

Could someone whose opinion of collective nouns is slightly more NPOV than my personal burning hatred point out in the intro to the article that collective nouns are not a fixed construction of the English language -- one can refer to a group of any sort of thing as just that, a "group", or indeed mix and match in any way one sees fit. This would be for the benefit of non-native speakers: I would hate them to think they actually have to learn all this rubbish. Collective nouns are very much a literary game, and even that is a tenous description as any writer worth their salt recognises them as dead metaphors. -- Tarquin 15:44 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)


 * The worst mistake I have made in my Wikipedia career was rudely and ignorantly trashing one of the collective nouns collections (both verbally, and due to a browser bug, physically). I have stayed away from them since then, out of some combination of embarrassment and good manners, so I can't be the one to clear up this either, but all this stuff is distinctly countereducational. I hate hurting people's feelings.  I have stayed away from this since my first weeks in Wikipedia and even took it off my Watchlist because I was so upset with myself, but Tarquin's comments have brought me reluctantly back to the issue.  Fun's fun, but somehow this isn't fun.


 * Here is my summary.
 * Like Tarquin said, a group is a group and that's that for 99 per cent of the cases.
 * There are a few English words (two dozen?) meaning a group of people or things -- clan, band, choir, etc.
 * There are also a few more legitimate specialized words for groups of certain kinds of things -- pod of whales, gaggle of geese (which means flying geese, by the way, walking geese are a flock, like most birds).
 * Then there was/is a parlor game of making these things up for other groupings -- fanfare of strumpets is my favorite. I just added rush of goldfinches up above in the same spirit.
 * Then there are many that are just plain dumb, aanthology of aardvarks, etc.
 * Finally there are the inane, that don't even meet the extremely low requirements of this category, such as (culled from above) hail of bullets, coil of stamps, tissue of lies, trail of tears


 * The root article here haltingly manifests some awareness of these distinctions, but the collection of links goes to cripplingly overcoded and barely editable list articles that provide almost no guidance in the use of these nouns and are filled with cases marked "spurious", or with worthless, unannotated sublists like brigade of soldiers, company of soldiers, platoon of soldiers, squad of soldiers. Overall this has been a great deal of hard work on someone's part that is not really good encyclopedia material.  Compare it to English plural to see how weak it really is. (Yes, I started  the plural article, but many many people have contributed to it.  It is the only article I regularly worked on that now seems almost complete.)  Ortolan88

are there free etymology dictionary?
the question in the article Do there exist any freely accessible dictionaries of etymology on the Web? is moved here.

among collegiate-sized dictionaries, websters, merriem webster, American Heritage, AHD is the most endowed with respect to etynomology.

they are freely avaliable on the web: m-w.com, dictionary.com

PS AHD provides a "notes" section on "collective nouns", see dictionary.com on flock.

Xah P0lyglut 06:23, 2003 Dec 9 (UTC)

For free etymology online, check out http://www.etymonline.com/. It is mostly based on the OED but doesn't contain all the words they've got over there.

It might be worth adding a note to redirect people who are looking for mass noun. On Wiktionary I'm finding people constantly using the term "collective noun" when they are really talking about the idea of "uncountable noun" / "mass noun" / "non-count noun" &mdash; Hippietrail 12:35, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Comments on specific examples

 * "A wing of aircraft" I belive this applies 1) only to military aircraft, and 2) implies a specifc number of craft, just as a "squad" or a "regiment" is not a general collective noun for soldiers. DES (talk) 20:01, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A roll of coins" I belvie is a fairly specific arrangement, referring to a stack of coins rolled in a sleeve of soem sort. It does not applie to a loose pile of coins. In fact usually this implies a particualr number. For example in the U.S. a roll of quarters is a set of 40, or $10. DES (talk) 20:01, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A rouleau of coins" same coments as on "rollof coins" as this is merly the french version of that term. DES (talk) 20:01, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A wealth of information" while this ia a common phrase, the term "wealth " can also be applied to an ample provision of any substance. DES (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A chain of islands" I belive this implies a specific, albiet common arrangement -- i.e. a realatively linear grouping. DES (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A cache of jewels" a "cache" is any hidden or safely contained repository of valuable substance, such as food, gold, treasure, or data. It is as far as I know nbot in any way particular to jewels. DES (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A ring of keys" refers to a specifc arranngemet, i.e. a goup of keys held on or joined by a ring. it would not apply to a pile of loose keys, nor to any general collection of keys. DES (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A convoy of lorries" "Convoy" applies to any group of vehicles traveling togehter with a common purpose -- derived from a group of merchant ships traveling under the escort of warships. DES (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "An anthology of prose" an Anthology is any colletion of shorter works into a single colective work, adn applies no more to prose than to verse or pictures. It also does not apply to prose not so collected, so it implies a moderatly specific arrangement. DES (talk) 20:18, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A book of wagers" I belive this implies a set of wagers collected in a betting book (hence the term Bookie) and not any general collection of wagers. DES (talk) 20:18, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * A faculty of academics" this refers only to a group that in soem sense forms the personel of a specific school, college, or other institution, or in some cases a departmetn or division within such an insititution. It would not apply to a general group of academics, nor to only a portion of the personel of such an institution. DES (talk) 20:39, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A staff of employees" again thsi normally implies the complete set of the employees of a particualr firm or employer, or perhaps of a partiucualr division or section of such a firm. it would not apply to a group of employees from multiple employers, nor to only soem of the employees for a given employer. DES (talk) 20:39, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A banner of knights" I think, although I would need to verify, that this applies to a specific grouping, like a "squadron of cavalry". I belvive it orginally implied all the Knights following a particular leader (such as a "Knight bannerette). DES (talk) 20:39, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A cortege of mourners" This refers to the complete set of mourners in a funeral procession. it does not refer to only some of those mourners, nor to morners in other circumstances, nor to collections from more than one such procession. DES (talk) 20:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A team of players" this should mean the complete set -- all the players for a particualr side in a particualr sport. DES (talk) 20:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A cohort of students" this typically means all and only the students of a particular year or age. The term is also applied in demographic or population studies, to any group of people of the same age, or who passed a particular milestone (such as marrying or giving birth) in a particualr year. It is thus a very specific term, but it is not particualrly specific to students. DES (talk) 20:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A coven of witches" implies a specific group who gather for particualr rituals, not any genric group of witches. DES (talk) 20:48, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * "A congregation of worshipers" this refers to the particualr group who gather at a particular place or institution for worship, either on a specific occasion or on a regualr basis. it does not refer to any general gathering or group of worshipers, nor to a group that is only part of a congregation. DES (talk) 20:48, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
 * In the Royal Air Force groups aircraft and the names of their officers are (from smallest) Flight Lieutenant, Squadron Leader, Wing Commander and Group Captain. Hence Flight, Squadron, Wing and Group.

etymology question
I've never heard of a "parcel of pigs", but the variant "passel" made me do a doubletake! Is this actually used somewhere? If it is, and this is what struck me, is it possible that this was derived from Yiddish or Ashkenazi Hebrew? This seems almost paradoxically impossible, but "passel" is one way I've heard Yinglish speakers pronouncing פסול ... "pasûl", a Hebrew word for "unfit", "unclean", "improper" and by extension in Yinglish, "prohibited". This pretty well describes the halakhic view of pigs... Also, another Hebrew word, derived from the same shoresh, is פסל ..., meaning "idol"...  If this is the source, it pretty well describes, at least according to one story, how a pig used by Antiochus sparked the Maccabean revolt...  Or is this all just fanciful conjecture and amazing coincidence? Tom e rtalk 19:46, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

"passel of" is American slang, sort of "farmer/country western" or Appalachian, meaning "a bunch of", it comes from the word parcel. "he had a whole passel of corncobs", i.e. not necessarily applied to pigs. It's possible whoever decided to add this term to the fanciful venery list was aware of the yiddish wrt pigs 2603:8001:D300:A631:0:0:0:10D0 (talk) 20:17, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I am proposing a merger of plural, nullar, trial (grammatical number), paucal, collective noun and singulative with grammatical number. Here are my reasons: A related page which is probably best left separate is the one on the dual number, which seems too large to merge with 'grammatical number'. See also Talk:Grammatical_number. FilipeS 14:57, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Most of those other entries have very little in them. They could easily become sections, or even paragraphs in 'grammatical number';
 * One exception is the plural entry, which does contain quite a bit, but a lot of what it has could just as well be in a general entry about 'grammatical number';
 * I think that some of what is currently in the plural article might be used to improve the quality of the 'grammatical number' article;

Proposal withdrawn. See Talk:Grammatical_number. FilipeS 20:14, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Collateral vandalism on birds pages
A user is repeatedly censoring the collective noun of birds on some pages, at least Lark and Raven. Editors of collective nouns may be interested in chiming in about what I see as unilateral and unencyclopedian vandalism. Issue commented with diffs at User_talk:Jimfbleak.

Note: the user seem in the habit of purging his talk page without archival, especially for censoring criticism; you may have to look at this revision from today if my item has been deleted.

-- 62.147.38.149 11:29, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I am the user referred to, and if anyone believes that I am a vandal, please look at my user contributions (20,000 plus). The anon user above persists in inappropriate additions to Lark and Raven, despite my explanation that the made-up Victorian terms he uses have no genuine usage outside lists of collective nouns. If the terms are meaningful at all, (and the anon user provides no references) they apply only to the Common Raven and Skylark.


 * Can anyone give a counterexample, eg a published reference to an exultation of any of the African or Asian larks?


 * Furthermore, despite my pointing out that vandal is a term of abuse, the user persists in using it, and did not have the decency to let me know he was denigrating me on this forum. More in sorrow than anger, jimfbleak 12:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I've just noticed the other snide dig. I delete all old and dealt with talk content - please look at the example the anon user gives, and decide for yourselves. I never delete ongoing material, despite the innuendo. It is easy to retrieve old edits from history, so I've never bothered to archive jimfbleak 12:47, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * What about this compromise this for the lark family, assuming anon doesn't produce verification that exultation is used for all larks (edits must be verifiable)?


 * "The collective noun for larks is a flock (sources: Mullarney, Svensson, Zetterstrom and Grant, Collins Bird Guide ISBN 0-00-219728-6, Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa: The Birds of the Western Palearctic)"


 * Raven is more of a problem in that the species I know about do not actually form flocks. One of the nonsenses of these so-called collective nouns is that they are apllied to birds that do not form flocks, such as ravens and owls. they are basically a twee literary conceit with no place in a scientifically orientated article.


 * jimfbleak 14:23, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Good point about collective nouns applied to birds that do not actually hang out together. I came to the talk page to see if anyone else had objected to the example in the introduction being a "parliament of owls" since 1) it is obscure and therefore is not as helpful at immediately introducing the topic as a more common term and 2) it is, in fact, a ridiculous term that would never apply to birds outside of a zoo.  Ventifact

Hmm, I just noticed that the "parliament of owls" example links to the article on The Silver Chair (C.S. Lewis), which has convinced me that using it as the introductory example was based on someone's personal fancy. Ventifact

American English Usage
The entry's remark on collective nouns' use in U.S. English was as follows when I found it: ''In the English spoken in the United States and at least in other Indo-European languages, one says "the team is..." (seen as a singular noun, unless it is actually "teams").'' This seemed remarkably garbled and unclear, so I have altered it. I am not sure what the reference to Indo-European languages was supposed to mean, so I have removed it; was it supposed to say that in all other IE languages collective nouns are always singular? Also it might be worth mentioning that the music industry tends to be the major American exception to using collective nouns as singular ("the band are currently on tour"). 216.186.101.104Ventifact

As a bonafide American (US style) I'd like to take exception to this last statement. I myself would never say "the band are currently on tour" ("is" I would say), I don't believe it's common in the industry, and I just googled "the band is on tour" (using quotes) and found over half a million hits. Granted, "the band are on tour" got more hits, and I did not determine how many in each search are American vs British, but still. At any rate, I find the whole business of English vs American differences in using collective nouns interesting, especially regarding sports teams.RI-jim (talk) 23:57, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Following up on my post of 22 Dec, I have to say I find the second paragraph of "Metonymic merging of grammatical number" somewhat puzzling. I mean this: <<In British English, it is generally accepted that collective nouns can take either singular or plural verb forms depending on the context and the metonymic shift that it implies. For example, "the team is in the dressing room" (formal agreement) refers to the team as an ensemble, whilst "the team are fighting among themselves" (notional agreement) refers to the team as individuals. This is also British English practice with names of countries and cities in sports contexts; for example, "Germany have won the competition.", "Madrid have lost three consecutive matches.", etc.>> My question: When, in current British usage, is "team" or "Germany" (as a team) or "Arsenal" (team) ever mated with a singular verb? As an American who pays some attention to soccer/football, I don't think I ever see it. It's hard to believe that this is because Brits always have notional agreement in mind; I suspect it's because custom has eclipsed making a distinction so that now a team is always a "they" and never an "it". In today's online Guardian I see this headline: "Liverpool fall short against Zenit". The individuals on the team acting in disparate ways fell short? Or the team as a unit fell short? Is it just my American perspective that sees the latter are more sensible? RI-jim (talk) 00:14, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Other Languages?
Are collective nouns used in other languages?

If so, please list here.

Tabletop 07:34, 1 July 2006 (UTC)


 * In German, collectives are formed in basically one way only - by adding Ge- etc - which hardly counts as a collective noun.


 * In English, when a new word needs a new collective noun, people go out to find or invent a new one.


 * Again, what about other languages?   Tabletop (talk) 00:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Not quite true that all collectives in German are formed with "Ge-". German has lots of other collective nouns such as die Polizei, "the police", or die Mannschaft, "the team", which invariably take the singular, unlike English. --Bermicourt (talk) 07:58, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Swedish: boskap: cattle, folk: people avkomma:progeny, ärter: peas (in general -- if you can count them you say ärtor), polis : the police force see: http://books.google.se/books?id=Z0v3qu0s5Y8C&pg=PA27&dq=swedish+collective+nouns&hl=sv&sa=X&ei=aRtSVMrtJ-bVygOu2YGgAg&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=swedish%20collective%20nouns&f=false also section 121

Lacreighton (talk) 11:13, 30 October 2014 (UTC)


 * In Esperanto, -ar is an explicit and quite productive suffix, used creatively to produce a large number of words, e.g. tree/forest, fish/school, and step/stairs. I'll include a few examples and a Wiktionary link. Probably the various languages should be moved into subsections, as is customary in similar articles, e.g. pejorative suffix. -Simplulo (talk) 18:09, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Metonymic merging of grammatical number: AmE epistemology
The recent change that I reverted was not an improvement; in fact it obscured the reference to the very idea that there are epistemological considerations of how language users do or don't define "right" and "wrong" in grammar, and thus it was not NPOV, which the earlier version was. The straw-man example added, "The cars am traveling fast", is only speciously parallel to the metonymical shift seen with collectives: yes, it has "number mismatch", but not for any etically logical reason. Before edit-warring on this topic, please make sure that you understand what epistemology and metonymy are. Lumbercutter 15:33, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Collective nouns by status?
I'm given to understand that Wikipedia is not meant to be a significant source of funny, per se, but if the collective noun list is going to include spurious entries (and I hope it continues to do so, as some of them are quite amusing and/or clever), it might be handy to add a page that lists them by status - or, indeed, to include a page that only lists the spurious ones. Actually, come to think of it, it might be useful to include a list by status, including uncertain or questionable collective nouns, so that those with expertise might be more able to find them and provide evidence for or against them.

Relatedly, what qualifies a spurious collective noun for inclusion? Are there criteria somewhere that I just haven't seen? If not, shouldn't there be? -Id the Mildly Confused 05:06, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Terminology
The term "Collective Noun" is just one of many ways of describing these expressions. It should be stated that they are sometimes referred to as "collective terms", "terms of association", "company terms", "nouns of multitude", "group terms", "terms of venery" and "venereal terms" (the "venery/venereal" here refers to "hunting" ... originally many such terms were used for groups of animals). Linguists also refer to them as "partitives", though this can cause confusion with words such as "some" which are "partitives" for the grammarians. This can be particularly confusing for foreigners (and learners of Romance languages ... as well as other languages including Japanese) who would use the term "partitive" to refer to the preposition "of" joined to a definite article, as in French when "de"+"le" becomes "du", or in Italian when "di"+"la" becomes "della". These combinations take on a partitive meaning (=some) when used to mean a vague amount, as in "du pain". (14:39, 4 August 2007 62.10.34.251)

The opening paragraph is also a little misleading about what "collective noun" really means. "Pride" in the sense of a group of lions is a collective noun regardless of whether it's in the phrase "pride of lions" or standing alone. I think it would be better to use "group" as the introductory example, and then introduce terms of venery as a special case later. Not R (talk) 17:29, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Chicago Manual of Style vs. Wikipedia (Buy Your Tickets Here!)
I quote from the most recent copy I've seen of the CMOS website:


 * http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/new/new_questions01.html


 * Q. I’m curious about your equating collective nouns with mass nouns in CMOS 5.8. The explanation at Wikipedia states that it is incorrect to equate the two.


 * A. The article you cite takes the stickler’s view in the face of dictionary evidence that the two kinds of nouns are commonly equated. That’s the kind of “incorrectness” we’re prepared to live with.

Any takers?

Timothy Perper (talk) 19:03, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

fxhb j —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.50.201.140 (talk) 02:50, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

So, "The United States are ..." or "The United States is"? I would like to know; surely I am not the only one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.227.105.200 (talk) 07:13, 3 July 2009 (UTC)


 * "The United States is". &mdash;JerryFriedman (Talk) 20:45, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Refrencedesk query
Please couold somebody her ehelp with RD/L this reference desk query about collectiv nouns? THanks! 117.241.120.150 (talk) 08:48, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * This is at least 3 different places you've posted this question. The most obvious thing to do is contact the publisher. If they don't make an electronic version, then any electronic version you might find on the internet must necessarily be a copyright violation. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:30, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

deleted text
I deleted this text because I don't see a need for an example from fiction:


 * Arthur Conan Doyle in Sir Nigel (1906), set in the mid-14th century, depicts the situation of hunting terminology in the late medieval period. The novel's protagonist in chapter 11 is instructed that "for every collection of beasts in the forest, and for every gathering of birds in the air, there is their own private name so that none may be confused with another." The speaker reports that the chief huntsman of the duke of Burgundy was supposed to have been able to list more than a hundred such terms, but suspects that he had been making them up as he went along, as "there was none to say him nay".

&mdash;JerryFriedman (Talk) 20:46, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Mangled sentence
In the "Terms of venery" section, four lines from the bottom of the first paragraph, the word "introduced" is repeated. I started to delete one of the words, but I think something else is wrong; I'm just not sure what. Here's the phrase: "...the list in the Book of Saint Albans (1486) runs to 165 items, many of which, even though introduced by introduced [ital] the compaynys of beestys and fowlys, [ital] do not relate to venery but to human groups and professions and are clearly humorous." I'm not sure where the italicized portion came from nor what it has to do with the rest of the sentence, but if read literally, ignoring the repeated "introduced," it would seem to say that "the compaynys of beestys and fowlys" introduced items to the list in the Book of Saint Albans, which obviously makes no sense. I understand that many additions were made to the list for the sake of humor as opposed to creating a specific word to differentiate between groups of animals, but what did the author intend to write? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Loupgrru (talk • contribs) 04:41, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

the point is that the list is introduced (headed, titled) by the compaynys of beestys and fowlys, but then it has many items that concern neither beasts nor fowls, but people/professions. --dab (𒁳) 18:38, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Crowd-sourced collective nouns
I'm not sure how to fit it within the text itself, so I'll leave that to someone else. However I really think that http://all-sorts.org/ should be mentioned as an (unofficial) source of collective nouns. Most are closely related to puns or topical references. &mdash;174.78.94.230 (talk) 21:34, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Might want to submit it to http://www.dmoz.org. Wikipedia isn't a web directory and crowdsourced sites don't qualify as reliable sources. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:52, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Agreement of collectives
Where do we find WP guidance on the verbal agreement of collective nouns e.g.


 * "There is a number of article..." or "There are a range of options..." Whilst the latter "sounds" correct, the former appears grammatically correct. --Bermicourt (talk) 08:00, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Collective singular
"Collective singular" refers to the noun-verb agreement of collective nouns. If not a full merge, there certainly needs to be more references between the two. heat_fan1 (talk) 12:40, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * ✅ Klbrain (talk) 10:30, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Agreement in different forms of English
As an aside in American English until the Civil War it was common in to refer to "[These] United States are ..." since the Civil War "[The] United States is ...", so part of the difference between the dialects may be explained by that change bought about by the Federal government winning that war, and it use extending to other similar collective nouns in American English.

I have a problem with these sentences in the paragraph that starts "In American English":

The problem is that companies and corporations have a legal identity, and as such all those example would be the same in British English. For example in British English very few if any would write "British Airways are an airline company in Europe", so I am not sure why they are listed as examples under American English -- PBS (talk) 10:33, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Should one use 'is' or 'are' when referring to a territory with a plural name?

 * See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names). (contributions by User:PatLurcock, User:Chipmunkdavis, User:Roger 8 Roger and User:Wee Curry Monster)

The examples raised in that discussion are: Falkland Islands, Seychelles, Maldives, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and the Marshall Islands. I would add the British Isles. Are there any differences in use between dialects of English for these territories?

For example in British English I would write "The British Isles are off the coast of mainland Europe. The inclusion of Ireland in the British Isles is controversial". Would someone writing in American English use "is" instead of "are" in the first sentence? What about for the Falkland Islands "The Falkland Islands are in the South Atlantic." or "The Falkland Islands is ..."? In the case of the "British isles" is not an synonym for the United Kingdom, but "Falkland Islands" is also used as a name for the territory listed one of the British Overseas Territories. In British English it would be "The [British territory of the] Falkland Islands is in the South Atlantic ..." so context matters. -- PBS (talk) 10:33, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Is the different usage based on whether we are talking about the political unit (is) or the geographical group (was). For the second we could also use 'is' if referring to an archipelago, so yes, context matters. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 10:47, 22 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I believe I have answered this question previously.  The examples given are examples of Collective nouns and Metonymy.  For example Falkland Islands can refer to the BOT but can also be a metonym for the archipelago.  As such the verb agreement can take either singular or plural verb forms depending on context.  At least that is the case with British English and WP:ENGVAR should be respected where British English is appropriate.  I'm not 100% whether the same applies in American English but I believe it does. WCM email 11:11, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Covid update for this topic (yes, there is such a thing)
According to the Australian government's ABC, mutations on a virus occur in "constellations". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:E422:3C01:85A:DD8A:8283:8A61 (talk) 09:21, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

"one kind of thing" or "one kind of things"?
@User:Megaman_en_m In your edit summary your wrote: "one kind of things" brings up less than 15 hits ''. But my Goggle returns completely different results:

Google [All/Books] results: Do we use the same Google? 85.193.252.19 (talk) 01:38, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * "one kind of things" 1.7m/83k
 * "one kind of thing" 1.6m/58k


 * Running the query through Google again I got a different result. No idea what happened last time. Anyway, this still doesn't sit right with me. I hereby invite other people to give their thoughts on this matter.--Megaman en m (talk) 02:10, 25 January 2022 (UTC)