Talk:Collective noun

message: 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" — Hippietrail 12:35, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  are there free etymology dictionary? 

message: *"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)
thread_title:  Comments on specific examples 

message: 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?  Tomertalk 19:46, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  etymology question 

message: I am proposing a merger of plural, nullar, trial (grammatical number), paucal, collective noun and singulative with grammatical number. Here are my reasons:
* 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;
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#Merger_proposal. FilipeS 14:57, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

message: 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)
thread_title:  American English Usage 

message: 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)
thread_title: Metonymic merging of grammatical number: AmE epistemology

message: 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)
thread_title: Collective nouns by status?

message: 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)
thread_title:  Terminology 

message: 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)
replies: text: "The United States is". —JerryFriedman  (Talk) 20:45, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chicago Manual of Style ''vs.'' Wikipedia (Buy Your Tickets Here!)

message: Please couold somebody her ehelp with Wikipedia:RD/L#An_Exultation_of_Larks this reference desk query about collectiv nouns? THanks! 117.241.120.150 (talk) 08:48, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Refrencedesk query 

message: 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". 
—JerryFriedman  (Talk) 20:46, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  deleted text 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Mangled sentence 

message: 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.
—174.78.94.230 (talk) 21:34, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Crowd-sourced collective nouns 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Agreement of collectives 

message: "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)
replies: text: Klbrain (talk) 10:30, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge with [[Collective singular]] 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Agreement in different forms of English 

message: :See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Should one use 'is' or 'are' when referring to a territory with a plural name?. (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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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. WCMemail 11:11, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should one use 'is' or 'are' when referring to a territory with a plural name? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Covid update for this topic (yes, there is such a thing) 

message: @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:   
*"one kind of things" 1.7m/83k
*"one kind of thing" 1.6m/58k
Do we use the same Google? 85.193.252.19 (talk) 01:38, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  "one kind of thing" or "one kind of thing'''s'''"?