collective noun

A noun (such as team or family) that refers to a collection of individuals. In American English, collective nouns usually take singular verb forms. Collective nouns can be replaced by both singular and plural pronouns, depending on their meaning.

Examples and Observations:

• "The family is one of nature's masterpieces."
  (George Santayana)



• "The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong."
  (George Bernard Shaw)



• "The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence."
  (H.L. Mencken)



• "Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening."
  (Dorothy Sarnoff)



• "Liverpool are magic, Everton are tragic."
  (Emlyn Hughes, referring to two English football teams)



• "Nouns such as committee, family, government, jury, and squad take a singular verb or pronoun when thought of as a single unit, but a plural verb or pronoun when thought of as a collection of individuals:
  • The committee gave its unanimous approval to the plans.
  • The committee enjoyed biscuits with their tea.
  (David Marsh, Guardian Style, Guardian Books, 2007)



• "Many noncount nouns have an equivalent countable expression using such words as piece or bit (partitive or collective nouns) followed by of:
  • luck: a piece of luck
  • grass: a blade of grass
  • bread: a loaf of bread
  A common quiz question is to find the special collective term which describes such groups of things: a flock of sheep, a pride of lions. English has some highly specialized (but nowadays rarely used) collective nouns, especially for animals. . . . One of them [is] a kindle of kittens. Other colourful collectives are:
  • an exaltation of larks
  • a muster of peacocks
  • a rout of wolves
  • a skulk of foxes"
  (David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, Cambridge University Press, 2003)