collections
- 1Plural of collection.
The library's rare manuscript collections draw scholars from around the world.
Both collections were donated by the same family.
Note
An ordinary plural that spans very different senses of collection: a library's holdings, the money gathered by passing a box, even a mathematician's set of sets. Collection also means debt collection, and from that the plural has grown two specialized uses of its own, the status of an overdue account and the department that chases it. In those uses the -s no longer counts separate things.
- 2The department that tries to recover payment on accounts that have gone past being merely late.
The hospital handed the overdue bill to its collections after months of silence.
A representative from collections called to arrange a payment plan.
Note
Here the word stops naming a stage and names the people who handle it. It is used like the name of an office, without an article, and it stands in for whoever answers the phone: you talk with collections, or someone from collections calls you. The preposition shows which meaning is meant. An account is in the overdue status, but a person speaks with the department.
- 3The status of a debt that has progressed beyond merely being past due into active recovery.
The unpaid medical bill eventually moved into collections.
An account in collections accrues extra fees and damages the borrower's credit score.
Note
Accounting's word for a debt that has stopped being merely late. It is said of an account, not of a person, and it behaves like a place: an account goes to collections, is sent to collections, or sits in collections. It takes no article and keeps its plural form. It names a stage in the life of a debt rather than any group of things collected.
collections is a form of collection
collection, noun: A group of objects or an amount of material brought together, as by acquiring, gathering, or exhibiting them. Full entry
- Forms
- collectioncollections plural
- Spelling
- collection → collections: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
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