Collective Nouns
In linguistics, a collective noun is the name of a number (or collection) of people or things taken together and spoken of as one whole. For example, in the phrase "a pride of lions", pride is a collective noun.
Most collective nouns encountered in everyday speech, such as "group", are mundane and are not specific to one kind of constituent object. For example, the terms "group of people", "group of dogs", and "group of ideas" are all correct uses. Others, especially words belonging to the large subset of collective nouns known as terms of venery (words for groups of animals), are specific to one kind of constituent object. For example, "pride" as a term of venery refers to lions, but not to dogs or cows.
Collective nouns should not be confused with mass nouns, or with the collective grammatical number.
Read more about Collective Nouns: Derivational Collectives, Metonymic Merging of Grammatical Number, Terms of Venery (words For Groups of Animals)
Famous quotes containing the words collective and/or nouns:
“We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past—the portrayals of family life on such television programs as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” and all the rest.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)