collection
Pluralcollections
- 1A group of objects or an amount of material brought together, as by acquiring, gathering, or exhibiting them.
The museum's collection includes paintings from every major European school.
Over the years she built a remarkable collection of rare first editions.
Usagea collection of things (a collection of first editions), or with a noun in front: a stamp collection, an art collection.
Similarassortment, set, array, accumulation, selection
- 2The act or process of collecting things or money from different places or people, such as trash, taxes or unpaid debts.
Tax collection funds most public services.
The collection of survey responses continued through the summer.
UsageOften after another noun: tax collection, garbage collection, debt collection.
- 3A line of new clothing or other goods that a designer or company produces and launches as a set, typically for a single season.
The designer showed her fall collection in Paris to a packed room of buyers.
The furniture brand releases two collections a year, each built around a different color palette.
UsageOften named by season: her fall collection, the new spring collection.
Less common meanings
- 4A gathering of money for charity or another purpose, often by passing a box or plate for donations.
The volunteers organized a collection for the flood victims.
After the sermon, a collection was taken for the building fund.
UsageUsually take up a collection, or a collection for a cause: a collection for the flood victims.
Note
Money gathered from a group, usually for a cause: a plate in church, a box passed from hand to hand, an envelope going round the office. Unlike the general act of collecting, this sense always means money, freely given.
- 5The act of inferring or concluding from premises or observed facts, or the conclusion drawn in this way.
We may safely say thus, that wrong collections have been hitherto made out of those words by modern divines.
1643, J[ohn] M[ilton], The Doctrine and Discipline of DivorceNote
Logic's old word for an inference: a conclusion gathered up from premises, true to the Latin root behind the everyday sense. Milton, in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), could charge that divines had made wrong collections out of certain words. Modern English says inference or conclusion. Used this way today, the word reads as deliberate archaism or is simply misunderstood.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Collection historically meant an inference or conclusion from premises or facts. en.wiktionary.org
- The inference sense and the everyday gathering sense share a Latin root. en.wiktionary.org
- John Milton wrote The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, first published in 1643. en.wikipedia.org
- Milton accused divines of drawing wrong collections from certain words. en.wikisource.org
- 6The quality of being composed and self-possessed; calm composure under pressure.
- 7In mathematics, an informal word for a set or class, especially one whose members are sets; it may be too large to be a set.
- 8A set of pitch classes that a composer draws on as the basis of a work.
- 9College examinations at Oxford University, generally taken at the start of term.
- 10The territory or jurisdiction administered by a collector of excise duties.
Practice
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Origin
The word comes from Middle English colleccioun, borrowed from Old French collection, which came from Latin collēctiō (from collēctus, from colligō "collect together"). Colligō is made of con- plus legō ("bring together, gather"), ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *leǵ- ("to gather, collect").
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 7 facts
- Collection comes from Middle English colleccioun, borrowed from Old French collection. en.wiktionary.org
- Old French collection came from Latin collēctiō. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin collēctiō derives from collēctus. en.wiktionary.org
- Collēctus derives from colligō. en.wiktionary.org
- Colligō means collect together. en.wiktionary.org
- Colligō consists of con- plus legō, meaning bring together or gather. en.wiktionary.org
- The word ultimately derives from Proto-Indo-European *leǵ-, meaning to gather or collect. en.wiktionary.org